As many have suspected, Theo and the Red Sox really had no choice but to trade Manny or face insubordination and perhaps worse the entire season. From this morning’s Boston Globe:

Of all the Manny moments in Boston, the last ranks as one of the most confounding. Within an hour after Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein informed Manny Ramírez he had been traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers Thursday, Ramírez’s agent, Scott Boras, called the Sox back, according to a source with direct knowledge of the negotiations. If the Sox dropped the option years on his contract - which they had agreed to do if they traded him - Boras said Ramírez would not be a problem the rest of the season.

For the Sox, the source said, Ramírez’s pledge of good behavior only served as a tacit admission that his disruptive conduct of the last couple of weeks had been calculated, and they had had good cause to suspect more was in the offing if they did not trade him. The Sox told him thanks but no thanks, what was done was done, and pack plenty of sunscreen.

You can’t say with a straight face that the Red Sox are a better team with Jason Bay in the lineup than Manny Ramirez (although he certainly made a fantastic debut last night) or that the Red Sox got the better end of the three-way deal with the Pirates and Dodgers.  But you can say that there was really no other choice left.  Either have a player on your team who will quit on you and continue to poison the clubhouse, or move on and get what you can.  The Sox chose the latter and I don’t think there was really anything else they could do.

Edit: And an interesting item to remember about Manny Ramirez and his agent Scott Boras:  Manny’s original monster deal was not negotiated by Boras, but by now-Arizona Diamondacks general partner Jeff Moorad (he put his percentage to good use it appears).  Although he denies it, this has all the makings of a Boras-orchestrated move on it.  Without a new contract (which he’ll now be getting this offseason thanks to the option years being waved), Boras will make a nice bit of money off of Manny.  Hmm.