The discourse about the stunning Rafael Devers trade has been mostly unfavorable for the Boston Red Sox. While San Francisco Giants president of baseball operations Buster Posey is being largely celebrated for managing to pull off such a move, Boston chief baseball officer Craig Breslow is being crucified by many Red Sox fans for letting go of Devers for what is generally perceived as a light return.

But what's done is done, and Breslow appears to be adamant that the Red Sox did the best they could to find the right team as a trading partner to unload Devers. Breslow admitted that the Red Sox tried to check the temperature on Devers' value on the market by talking with other teams before pushing through with the deal with the Giants.

“I think we rightfully set a really high bar in order to execute a trade of this magnitude,” Breslow said during a press conference via Zoom on Monday (h/t Angelina Martin of NBC Sports Bay Area).

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“And we did have conversations with other clubs. We got a sense for the way that they might behave, whether it was today or a few weeks from now, and felt like this — it's not that this was the best deal that we could get, because the best deal that we could get may not necessarily be good enough to trade a player like Raffy Devers, but when you consider all of the factors here, this is the one that made sense. This is the path that we went down, and so we ended up where we did.”

All the Giants had to cough up for Devers was a package consisting of pitchers Jordan Hicks and Kyle Harrison, along with prospects James Tibbs III and Jose Bello. However, the Red Sox did not send any money to San Francisco, which means that the Giants will shoulder the remaining $250 million-plus on Devers' contract. Devers signed a 10 year,  $313.5 million contract extension with Boston in 2023.

A three-time American League All-Star, Devers now brings his powerful bat to a San Francisco team that is just21st in the big league with a .689 OPS.