After the infamous Rafael Devers trade, the Boston media have wanted answers. It took about 24 hours to finally address the situation, but a Zoom call took place last night. President of Baseball Ops Craig Breslow and CEO Sam Kennedy took to the media to answer the many questions that insiders had.
To be fair, the two executives definitely looked uncomfortable talking about the situation, and were ultimately dodging as much drama as they certainly could. They were also stuttering and stumbling over their words, albeit a lot more than they usually would. It sounded more like a damage control press conference rather than an explanation, but they still admitted to their mistakes. Kennedy took a part in this by saying, "in terms of what was missing, it just was that alignment in terms of what we felt we needed from him that would be in the absolute best interest of the ball-club. That’s a non-starter for us. We have to have that. We couldn’t get there. And as Bres said, maybe we need to look back at things we could handle better. But it’s definitely a two-way street. We didn’t get to the alignment we needed in the best interest of the Boston Red Sox, so we made the decision that we made."
From what Breslow and Kennedy were putting down, they knew the timing was horrible, and Breslow admitted as such. Breslow himself also stated that he never had that conversation with Rafael Devers about moving him to third, but tried to work things out as much as he could with him. Kennedy backed him up by saying, “As we think about the identity, culture, and environment that is created by great teams, there was something amiss here."
But as for the team going forward, Breslow is still incredibly confident in his new team. "We have a number of young players who are in the big leagues, and we're really excited about them. We're very deliberate and intentional about the environment we want to create." He also says the Red Sox may be aggressive at the deadline come July if things pan out right. There's hope, but not that much hope for this year.
This may be sad for Red Sox fans, and Sunday was a mournful Father's Day for them when they read the headlines that night. However, this isn't the first time the Sox have traded a franchise face and ended up succeeding, winning a few World Series titles along the way. Nomar Garciaparra was traded to the Cubs in a three-way trade that brought in Orlando Cabrera and Doug Mientkiewicz.
Those two supporting casts helped them to break the 86-year drought in 2004. Josh Beckett, Carl Crawford, and Adrian Gonzalez were all big contracts and supposed "franchise faces". However, Beckett was getting old, and Crawford and Gonzalez never truly fit in Boston. Those three big contracts were traded to LA. The next offseason, the Red Sox splurged on depth guys like Koji Uehara, Shane Victorino, Jonny Gomes, Stephen Drew, and Ryan Dempster. That upcoming season was their famous 2013 World Series run and is considered to be one of, if not THE best, bounceback seasons in Red Sox history.
All Breslow needs to do is prove that he can handle this animosity. This makes or breaks a team executive, and now is the perfect time for him to show it. Unfortunately, he's lost a lot of trust in Red Sox fans, regardless of his or Kennedy's reasoning. They've been broken, and he'll need to ride the ship in the right direction if he wants to stay in that front office. Craig Breslow is now on the hot seat.