We Tried Tracker Trade Deadline Edition: The Red Sox Win Again
A lot has happened in the past week. When times were simpler, back when the Phillies signed David Robertson three lifetimes and somehow only two weeks ago, I raised the possibility that we might bring back the We Tried tracker for the trade deadline. It wasn’t a sure thing, because the trade deadline isn’t really the time for We Trieds. They tend to happen over the offseason, when news is slow and multiple teams are bidding on free agents – which is why Robertson had so many reported suitors – rather than when teams are trying to swing trades. Loose lips can sink the many relationships involved in trades, and in the aftermath of the draft and deadline, everyone’s too busy to reach out to a reporter with an unattributed attempt to assure fans they made an effort. At least that’s how it normally works. This deadline featured a record-setting number of trades, and a surprising number of We Trieds to go along with all the actual action.
I’m sure I didn’t catch every We Tried, mostly because I spent the entirety of the deadline with my head down writing up transactions, listening to intense film scores in order to push me to write faster. I didn’t have much time to comb headlines and social media, but I did have help from some friends. I offer special thanks to readers JD, Elizabeth, Joel, and Fox Mulder Bat Flip for sending We Trieds my way. If you’re aware of any that I missed, as always, you can let me know on Bluesky or by email at WeTriedTracker@gmail.com.
Matt Trueblood of North Side Baseball (among other outlets) reported that the Cubs were “interested in” Kyle Finnegan. Mark Polishuk of MLB Trade Rumors wrote that the Cubs and Yankees both checked in on MacKenzie Gore, while Jon Heyman of the New York Post reported that the Padres “made a real run” at Gore, calling them “maybe the most aggressive pursuer.” Bob Nightengale of USA Today reported that the Twins asked about Christian Walker while negotiating the Carlos Correa deal. When the Yankees traded for David Bednar, Jeff Wilson of Rangers Today reported that the Rangers “miss[ed] out on a guy they’ve liked for a while.” Dan Hayes of The Athletic reported that four teams pursued Chris Paddack. The Tigers got him, while Heyman reported that the Rays were “also in on” Paddack, and Nightengale reported that the pitcher was “also being pursued” by the Yankees. Who was the fourth team? We may never know.
That’s a lot of effort. Keegan Matheson, who covers the Blue Jays for MLB.com, might have summed up the situation best. He wrote that the Jays “have been in on all of the big relievers who have moved (Duran, Helsley, Bednar), but everyone’s in on everyone. It doesn’t matter much.” That’s one recipe for a chaotic deadline: Everyone’s in on everyone. That said, as much as I appreciate the great job that Matheson does, I couldn’t disagree more about how much it matters. Some of us are in it for the love of the game. Some of us have read our catechism, so we know that a sin of thought is every bit as real as a sin of deed. You can keep your real transactions. Today, we’re interested in the heart of man.
There’s a crucial difference between a team being in on a player and the knowledge of that interest making its way to the public. The journey can happen in a million different ways, but that information changes the story. If it didn’t, neither reporters nor their sources would consider this whole practice worthwhile, and we’d have nothing to track. We can learn from We Trieds, and that brings us to the Red Sox.
Based on recent history, the Red Sox were widely expected to lead all of baseball in We Trieds over the offseason. Even though they did make a whole bunch of real moves, they still managed to exceed those high expectations. They blew every other team out of the water with 13 We Trieds. As it turns out, Craig Breslow and company weren’t done.
Leading up to the deadline, the Red Sox certainly looked like they were in position to buy once again. Our Playoff Odds had the Red Sox with a 60% chance of making the postseason. Only the Rangers, at 43%, were closer to a coin flip, which is to say that Boston was one of the two teams for whom upgrades could have made the biggest possible impact. The Red Sox had a big payroll. They had maybe the best assemblage of young talent to deal from. They had serious needs, with one of the worst backup catcher situations in the league, and injuries to their first baseman, second baseman, and too many pitchers to count. Lastly, they had the Rafael Devers trade hanging over them. If they miss the playoffs, this will go down as The Year The Red Sox Traded Their Best Player And Missed The Playoffs (Again). That’s a narrative no chief baseball officer wants on his shoulders. It seemed like a recipe for big additions, but it didn’t go down that way.
The Red Sox made only marginal upgrades, adding Dustin May’s 4.85 ERA to the rotation and lefty Steven Matz’s 3.38 ERA to the bullpen. Alex Speier of the Boston Globe made a keen observation after talking to Boston players about the underwhelming moves. “On Friday, they spoke — while complimentary of May and Matz — almost as if the deadline results were a layer of adversity they must overcome.” Said Trevor Story, “Like we’ve said all year, we know we’re a resilient crew.” Said Rob Refsnyder, “Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter what Bres did or didn’t do.”
Unsurprisingly, the Red Sox once again led the league in We Trieds. Ken Rosenthal and Jen McCaffrey of The Athletic reported that the Sox were “in the mix” for Eugenio Suárez. Jared Carrabis of the “Section 10” podcast “was told the Red Sox offered more for [Josh] Naylor than the Mariners did.” Rob Bradford of WEEI got confirmation that the Red Sox made various offers for Joe Ryan that included multiple top-10 prospects in the organization. Tim Healey of the Boston Globe had them linked to Dylan Cease and Merrill Kelly. Chris Cotillo of MassLive was told that the Red Sox were “in the mix but not aggressors” for Jhoan Duran. We may never solve the mystery of the fourth team in on Paddack, but we can rest assured it wasn’t the Red Sox. If they had been in on him, we would’ve heard about it.
The surprising thing was that the Red Sox didn’t just leave it there. Breslow has faced criticisms both from fans and prospective trade partners, and he went with a classic the-best-defense-is-a-good-offense approach. He invited manager Alex Cora into the front office to see what things were like on deadline day. He sought out players in the clubhouse in order to explain how and why he made the moves he did. He held a Zoom call with reporters on Thursday, appeared in the NESN booth during Saturday’s game, and met with reporters in person on Sunday.
“We’re happy with the guys we brought in, with Steven and Dustin, but we also pursued real impact players that we felt like could improve our team in ‘25 and beyond,” Breslow said during the Zoom call. “We were uncomfortably aggressive in trying to pursue them in the players we were trying to put into deals. Ultimately, it wasn’t from a lack of effort.” Breslow said every minor leaguer was on the table in trade talks: “I don’t think this was about an unwillingness to include guys or anything like that. Teams have to like our players in order for that to happen.” He reiterated that last sentiment during Saturday’s game, that other teams didn’t value Boston’s prospects highly enough to get deals done. This is way beyond getting a few We Trieds into the media. This is pushing a story.
That story seems simple enough. The Red Sox have their idea of what their prospects are worth, and they stand by it when a prospective trade partner disagrees, which (and this isn’t part of the story) seems to happen an awful lot. “It wasn’t from a lack of trying to be as aggressive as possible [or] from an unwillingness to get uncomfortable,” Breslow said. The obvious takeaway is that their conceptions of both value and discomfort may not match with those of the other 29 teams. The Red Sox really are trying. It’s just that they seem to be trying a little bit differently than the rest of the league, which means they end up committing a lot more sins of omission than sins of commission. And for reasons I’m not sure we’ll ever understand, they really want us to know about it.
If the four games since the deadline are any indicator, the Red Sox may also have the last laugh. They just swept the Astros, and then beat the Royals on Monday night, extending their winning streak to six games. This hot stretch pushed them ahead of the Yankees for the first Wild Card spot, dropped them to three games back in the division, and raised their Playoff Odds to 78.7%. No deadline deal is guaranteed to make a major impact, or even a positive impact for that matter, and the Red Sox could end up being the proof of that. They’re more or less rolling with what they had. It’s starting to look like it will work out just fine, but either way, don’t say they didn’t try to do more.
Davy Andrews is a Brooklyn-based musician and a writer at FanGraphs. He can be found on Bluesky @davyandrewsdavy.bsky.social.
I think Breslow is still learning how to be a GM at the trading/interpersonal level, but he seems to have a vision and path and is making moves and improving pieces of the team. Hopefully he keeps learning. I’d love Laurila to sit down with him this offseason and find out what he learned over the course of the year.
I would love to know a little more about how he views defense and versatility, given the earlier defensive woes.
I also want to know why Alcala is still on the team… there’s nobody in AAA better?
I think you may be right about the learning curve. His track record is pretty mixed so far but I agree that he has a vision and a plan, and I think he’s got an unusual combination of playing experience and analytical skill.
Right? Like it’s such a hard, weird job I don’t know how anybody could be really good at it off the bat, especially after doing a different job for 20+ years. It combines analytics, decision-making, interpersonal skills, public relations skills, and lots of stress. Every GM makes mistakes, hopefully they just don’t make the same one too often.
Breslow has done a lot of very good things, especially on the pitching side but his interpersonal skills are clearly bad.
Maybe it would be different if he worked for a franchise known for its stability but he doesn’t. He really should get some coaching on this and in the interim delegate a lot of the interpersonal stuff to other front office members who aren’t likely to quit or hang up the phone on him.
Even his record on pitching is mixed. Trading Sale was a disaster, Buehler hasn’t worked out, Giolito is good now but overall not a good signing, getting Priester was great, dealing Priester not so much last year’s deadline deals for Sims and Garcia didn’t work out, etc. etc.
Not that all of those were all Breslow’s fault, and he has some successes so far too. I’m cautiously optimistic but the jury is still out.
To me, the pitching development/pipeline is much more important than individual moves like that.
It’s clear their pitching infrastructure has improved quite a bit, especially in the minors. Only real dud there imo was bueheler. Giolito has been good, Priester/sale the process of moving was fine (and I don’t think Priester is this good, esp not in Fenway). Sale also wasn’t really even his. He came in and Sale hasn’t been good in years, was making 30mil on an expiring, and the 24 Sox were not supposed to be any good, so they got off the contract for a solid prospect. One of those moves were the process made sense, but results didn’t. To me, not maximizing Sale is more Bloom issue, than Breslow.
Breslow’s hits:
We’ll See or Neutral:
Bad:
I might be missing some moves but I think these are the main ones. On the whole, I’d say the guy is doing a great job!
I’d put the Sandoval and Giolito moves both in the hit column right now. And the Devers move.
I thought the Red Sox had a pretty experienced front office which has been together for a long time, throughout all the general managers.
Maybe? Eddie Romero is still there. He was very important in the signing of all of those great international prospects and he’s been around for something like 20 years.
But aside from him, I don’t know who is still around.
More importantly, they’ve been a total drama factory. The turnover alone is crazy. Cherington lasted about four years. Dombrowski lasted four years. Bloom lasted about four years. Francona’s departure was messy. Bobby Valentine was a disaster. Alex Cora quit rather than be fired after the sign stealing scandal, and then was rehired a year later once his suspension was up. David Price got in a feud with Dennis Eckersley. Trading Mookie Betts. Everything with Rafael Devers. I’m probably leaving things out, and some level of this is normal but not this much.
And then there’s the perception that the Red Sox don’t spend what it takes. Some and maybe even most of this is overblown, because Red Sox fandom has a…strong personality. But it is true that the Red Sox make more money than almost any team in MLB–definitely Top 5, potentially as high as #3– and seem to be extremely concerned with going over the tax line. John Henry usually doesn’t help that when he speaks. He is also known as one of the biggest hardliners in CBA negotations, along with Moreno and Reinsdorf (they almost derailed Manfred’s bid for commissioner). And there seems to be a problem with Kennedy and Henry overruling the POBO at various times, such as with Bregman.
Does this seem like a good place for a POBO who has communication issues? Maybe if he worked for the Rangers or Giants or Cardinals things would be a little easier for him. But this is a hard job!
They axed a lot of their long time scouts this off-season including those that were responsible for their top young players.
That stinks to hear
Having a big picture plan puts him ahead of a lot of executives, but I think it remains to be seen how well Breslow learns from his mistakes.
I thought that was the biggest problem with Chaim Bloom – he kept trying to master the small deals and gaining a fraction of an edge in every transaction. It works great when you can steal an occasional Wilyer Abreu in a trade or sign and fix a michael wacha, but there are too many missed opportunities and too much playing time going to bad players. I think it’s tough to recognize those missed opportunities as mistakes.
Hopefully Breslow’s big mistakes are easier to learn from than Bloom’s series of missed opportunities.
I think the Red Sox front office has imposed some pretty tricky limitations on both Bloom and Breslow. They seem extremely risk averse when it comes to the longer deals it takes to secure impact players. As a result, a big chunk of the payroll each year is taken up by short-term reclamation projects, especially starting pitchers. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that that practice has continued from Bloom to Breslow.
I see it very differently. What was the Devers deal if it wasn’t a long term deal to secure an impact player? I think they recognized it as a mistake and were able to get out from under before it was too late. With today’s signing of Anthony the Red Sox have 3 very important young players, Rafaela and Bello also, locked up into the 2030’s at what appears to be excellent value. Duran is under control through 2029. It is clear that signing young players on the way up is a much better approach than having to pay for past performance to aging players on the way down. It is hard to imagine handling the Xander Bogaerts and Rafael Devers situations any better than the Red Sox did. They understood Bogaerts, a great Red Sox player, was already slipping and not worth anything close to what he received from San Diego while getting some of Devers most productive years at a reasonable rate before the contract reaches its peak then relieving themselves of the end of the contract is exactly the right approach. Even if the return is nothing more than some empty uniforms, which unfortunately looks like it might be the case, Tibbs is already gone for May, yikes!, Hicks should be Designated tomorrow and Harrison has allowed 39 hits in 31 innings in AAA the money saved still makes the deal okay. I agree that the pitching plan is hard to understand but the reality is that every team is tearing their hair out trying to figure out what to do in a market that seems to have no solution. Sign Corbin Burnes, I don’t think so, or how about $67 for million for 3 years of Luis Severino, not with confederate money. I can’t believe that signing injured pitchers who won’t pitch for a year before finding out if their arms have been reattached successfully is a sound plan.
You got your wish, Alcala is gone. They needed another RH RP more than Matz unless they are moving Fitts to the bullpen asap. Can’t bank on Slaten given it’s a shoulder injury.
They replaced him with Isiah Campbell, so it feels more like a monkey paw curling…
I hope both Alcala and Campbell can turn it around. They didn’t make it to the big leagues without a lot of hard work.