One of the downsides of the Jacoby Ellsbury (other than the obvious losing-an-MVP-caliber-center-fielder piece of it) was that the Sox had to designate two young players for assignment. One was Michael Bowden, a once promising pitcher who flamed out as a below-average reliever in Boston. The other was Luis Exposito, a catcher some of us hoped would take the reigns from Jason Varitek. Exposito was jumped in the org chart by Ryan Lavarnway, and today officially left the club when he was claimed by Baltimore.
It's not likely Expo will come back to haunt the Red Sox -- he can't seem to keep his OPS over 700 in Pawtucket. His destination is a little surprising given the O's youthful catching tandem at the big-league level (Matt Wieters and Taylor Teagarden), but they had their own prospect bust to get rid of in Josh Bell, so perhaps they just needed some catching depth in the minors.
Bowden could be a different story, once he latches on elsewhere (the chances he slides through the ten-day waiver process like Scott Atchison are, in my mind, basically zero). Bowden was a first-round pick and has shown talent in the minors. High-caliber prospects like that tend to get a lot of second chances regardless of how pedestrian they look in the bigs (hi, Andrew Miller!). I wouldn't be surprised if Theo came calling on Bowden.
