The Red Sox acquiring Jason Bay from the Pirates ranks as CBSSports.com Rumor blog’s third-best trade-deadline deal involving a premier player since 2007.

Year: 2008

Trade: Boston acquires Jason Bay from Pittsburgh for Craig Hansen and Brandon Moss, sending Manny Ramirez to the Dodgers to complete the deal.

The reason behind the deal: I'll let Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe explain:

“We're going to miss the majestic homers, the pajama pants, the goofy antics in left field, and the bathroom breaks and cellphone calls from inside the Wall.

But we won't miss the fabricated injuries, lame excuses, and occasional no-shows. We won't miss watching Manny Ramirez dogging it down the first base line. His teammates and manager won't miss going to the ballpark wondering if Manny feels like playing tonight.”

Jason Bay was merely the All-Star level player the Red Sox were able to swing to make a deal work. Bay had two All-Star campaigns under his belt and was hitting a solid .282/.375/.519 for Pittsburgh with 22 home runs at the time of the deal.

Aftermath: Ramirez utterly raked for the Dodgers, carrying a .500 team at the time of the deal to the NL West championship. This deal, however, was never about Manny's performance. It was about Manny the teammate.

Bay continued to hit well with the Red Sox, putting up a .293/.370/.527 line with eight homers in 49 games. More importantly, it was a controversy-free performance. The Sox won 95 games and took the Wild Card by six games.

Boston was eliminated 4-3 in the ALCS by the Rays, but Bay was a star in both postseason series, compiling a .341/.471/.634 line with three homers and nine RBI in 11 games.

How it shaped today's team: Bay left following the 2009 season, and left field in Boston has never really been the same since. The Red Sox fixed the third base problem in 2010 with Adrian Beltre instead of investing in an outfielder. After watching Daniel Nava and Jeremy Hermida put up sub-.400 slugging percentages, Boston decided to invest in a long-term left field solution: Carl Crawford.

Whoops.

Crawford hit just .255/.289/.405 in his debut season with the Red Sox last year and an injury has limited the 30-year-old lefty to just six games so far in 2012. Players have returned to prominence after worse seasons in the past – see Adam Dunn with the White Sox this season – but Crawford is owed $122 million through the 2017 season. He will be 36 by then – the same age Ramirez was at the time of this trade.