The Boston Red Sox's decision to trade away the face of the franchise in Rafael Devers only less than two years after making a 10-year commitment, is not a good look for the franchise moving forward.
Keep in mind that this is now the third time the front office has let a franchise player leave, with Mookie Betts in 2020 and Xander Bogaerts in 2022.
At least with Betts and Bogaerts, the writing was on the wall, and you could see it from a mile away, but with Devers, this was a complete blindside decision that was done deceivingly behind the scenes of the front office.
After a slow start, Devers is one of the best bats in the MLB this season. He’s averaging a career-high .401 OBP, a career-high .905 OPS, he’s leading the league in walks (56) and games (73), and he ranks third overall in RBI (58).
Trading Rafael Devers Makes No Sense Other Than for Financial Reasons
At the end of the day, trading Devers at this point in time doesn’t make any sense as the Red Sox are climbing their way back to a playoff scenario in the American League East.
Trading Devers does much more than alleviate the books by shaving off over $250 million that’s owed to Devers, which San Francisco has willingly taken on over the next eight and a half years.
What a move like this does is make the rest of the clubhouse, consisting of homegrown players that this organization has built its future on, feel uneasy about their futures in Boston if they’re willing to sell a player like Devers.
The current homegrown players that are expected to take over the team are Roman Anthony, Marcelo Mayer, Kristian Campbell, Tristian Casas, and Jarren Duran.
A move like this also makes the fans feel uneasy about the direction of the team after the front office has done this three times in five years, and now this feeling is something that the fans and the players have in common.
When it comes to the front office, president Sam Kennedy, chief baseball officer Craig Breslow, and even owner John Henry, they’ve shown to be phony and disingenuous with what they say to the media and fans.
Just last week, Kennedy sat on set with Tom Caron on NESN, saying that the situation with Devers is water under the bridge, and they’re all ready to put it aside.
“Yeah, Raffy is one of the best left handed hitter, if not the best left handed hitter, in the league. And just has been elite and we need him to continue performing at the highest possible level. It’s good to see him take ground balls and we know that when the time is right, if we need him, he’ll be there. But we’re focused on winning games and keep him raking in that lineup and we should be ok.”
At this point, Kennedy is straight up lying, as there were trade discussions at this point for Devers, as Buster Posey, the San Francisco Giants president of baseball operations, said that he began the process a few weeks before the trade was complete.
The Red Sox organization has a lot of explaining to do for the current clubhouse and the fans. Kennedy and Breslow will speak to the media on a Zoom call at 8:00 PM prior to Monday’s game in Seattle.