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The Boston Red Sox have done it again. Just when you think they have learned their lesson about destroying their relationship with their best players, they go back to the well and blow up their team once again. The latest move has seen them shockingly trade superstar designated hitter Rafael Devers to the San Francisco Giants in exchange for Jordan Hicks, Kyle Harrison, James Tibbs III, and Jose Bello.
While the tension between Devers and the Red Sox front office was well known, the trade came out of nowhere. Boston, fresh off a sweep of the New York Yankees, now have a massive hole in the middle of their lineup for no good reason. Where they go from here is as good as anyone's guess, and it's clear their hopes of making any sort of substantial playoff run have now disappeared.
Of course, given that this is the Red Sox, there was a trade that fans could immediately compare this to, which was the deal that sent Mookie Betts to the Los Angeles Dodgers. And yet, when it comes to comparing these two ridiculous trades, it's obvious that the Devers move is the worst of the bunch, largely because of the work the front office just threw away when it came to making up for the Betts trade.
Red Sox make the same mistake with Rafael Devers that they made with Mookie Betts
To understand the full scope of the Devers trade, it's important to revisit the Betts deal. In February 2020, the Red Sox sent Betts, David Price, and cash considerations to the Dodgers in exchange for Alex Verdugo, Jeter Downs, and Connor Wong. Of that trio, only Wong is still in Boston, and he's essentially lost his starting catcher job to Carlos Narvaez for the time being.
Pretty much anyone with a reasonable understanding of baseball could have told you this deal was going to backfire. At the time of this deal, Betts was already a four-time All-Star who won the American League MVP Award and a World Series in 2018. Verdugo and Downs were highly rated prospects, but you always take established talent over potential talent (at least you should).
Ultimately, though, the Betts trade wasn't surprising because the Red Sox front office inexplicably did not want to hand him a massive new contract. Given the lack of a true salary cap in MLB, handing your best players outrageous contract is pretty much par for the course. Betts signed a 12-year, $365 million deal with the Dodgers just months after this trade, and he's gone on to help them win a pair of World Series titles.
Since then, Boston has just one playoff appearance, when they made a surprising run to the ALCS in 2021. After failing to extend another homegrown star, Xander Bogaerts, the front office finally appeared to learn their lesson with Devers. In January 2023, they agreed to a 10-year, $313.5 million deal that would officially kick in starting in 2024, meaning he wasn't even a year-and-a-half into this extension.
By now, we all know the drama that led to this deal going down. Devers took shots at Craig Breslow and the front office for essentially forcing him to move from third base to designated hitter, only to ask him to play in the field once Triston Casas and Alex Bregman suffered injuries. The relationship soured behind the scenes, which is apparently the primary reasoning for this move.
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There are just so many problems with this deal that it's tough to find a starting spot. While San Francisco is taking on the remainder of Devers deal, the return for him is downright awful. The trade is essentially a salary dump involving Boston's best player. If you needed to get out of the contract so badly, why did you even bother signing him to it in the first place?
Perhaps worse than the actual return was the timing. For the first time this season, Boston actually has momentum on the field. They just swept their bitter rival, which also happened to be their third series win in a row. Sure, the Devers drama was going to linger over the rest of the season, but the Red Sox now have an even bigger storyline lingering over the remainder of the year that they did not have to subject themselves to.
Why not wait until the offseason and see if the relationship between the player and the club could have been mended? Boston certainly had the talent to make a run this year, and winning cures everything. Now, the Red Sox are leaning on a crop of youngsters (Kristian Campbell, Marcelo Mayer, and Roman Anthony) to immediately deliver when manager Alex Cora has spent the better part of the year working to protect them as much as possible. Their top source of protection just got shipped to San Francisco for what will likely be the remainder of his career.
The biggest difference between these two trades is that the front office made their intentions with Betts clear. Their logic was wrong, no doubt about it, but it wasn't much of a surprise to see him get shipped to the Dodgers. They spent the better part of the past five seasons working on building themselves back up from that moronic move, only to make the same mistake with Devers for much worse reasons.
That alone is why this trade is worse than the Betts trade. After an offseason in which they finally appeared interested in building a winner again, they traded away their best player because he threw a hissy fit about what position he played. This is not a decision that is geared towards building a better baseball team.
Now, Boston finds themselves in virtually the same spot they were in five years ago. Without a superstar to lead the way, they are going to have to hope and pray that Campbell, Mayer, and Anthony all become All-Star caliber talents who can bring this team back to the promised land. But even if they do, what evidence do we have that suggests the Red Sox will hang onto them long enough for it to matter?
The hard truth is that we don't, because the team's last three homegrown superstars (that literally led the franchise to a championship in 2018) are all playing on the west coast now. There have been some dark days over the past few years for Red Sox fans, but there's no doubt that Sunday was the darkest of them all.
