BREAKING: Rafael Devers Traded To San Francisco Giants

What keeps bothering me: were Breslow and all his other highly-educated front office minions so collectively dumb in the offseason that they really couldn't find a way to properly communicate with their highest paid player on how they planned to improve the team defense?

Raffy may be an immature big kid, but such characterization is typical for anyone who's only job is playing pro sports. Often these guys -- who've been top dogs at every level and told how great they were for most of their lives -- are sensitive and emotional when things go badly.

Not recognizing Devers' type, and the possible repercussions of alienating him, is unforgivable. 

It's also unlikely by Boston's THINK TANK. This is a group that considers all angles. 

Maybe what just happened was their angle.

20 hours ago, Yaz Fan Since 67 said:

Hi Kimmi, haven't seen you in a while (I lurk a lot).  I get what you are saying but sorry losing a player like this over money and a diva attitude, when teams accept this to keep a star player happy for generations is a little hard to take after the Mookie trade and all the other moves meant to save money and not build a winner.  

So what if they rid themselves of a very expensive DH?  it's not like I expect them to put that money into a winning offer for Vlad Guerrero or anything like that.  Instead we will suck, again, because the owner does not care about winning.

As a 60 year Sox fan iInever expected this to happen.  

I never expected Devers to be traded.  Despite all the controversy surrounding him this season, trading him didn't even register on my radar.  I, like the rest of the baseball world, was absolutely stunned.  Once I got over my shock and thought about it a little bit, I'm thinking it probably had to be done.  I understand the disappointment and anger from most fans for trading him though.  His offense will be very difficult to replace, and he was a fan favorite.

I was never a fan of his contract, from Day 1.  Therefore, I'm glad we were able to get rid of his contract under these circumstances.

I respectfully have to disagree with you about keeping him on the team with the diva attitude.  His selfish attitude not only hurts the team on the field by limiting their flexibility, it also harms the team in the clubhouse.  There are too many young and impressionable players on the team to allow that type of attitude in the dugout.

We'll find out if and how we spend the "savings," hopefully this coming deadline and winter, but also over the next 8 years. It will be hard to pinpoint just what deals are made with the savings, but I do think the idea is that money spent on non DHs are likely to have better outcomes. 

With our record on spending on big ticket players being so poor since DD left, I can understand the reluctance to buy into this sort of talk, but then again, why do we assume spending $313M/10 on Devers was going to work out well, too? So far, it was, but this was year 1.4 into a 10 year deal on a FT DH. I mean, what could go wrong, right?

Time will tell.

We lost our best bat. Our Yankee killer. Our RBI king. That cannot be fixed in a year, if ever.

We gained some with the farm (Tibbs & J Bello) and the pen (Hicks,) and maybe found a decent SP'er or pen ore help (Harrison). We are not so lefty-centric in our line-up, but we are also not good hitter-centric, either. (This is not a plus.)

We may have gotten younger, but Devers was still in his early prime years. While getting out of the last 8 years of a 10 year deal might look good, historically and in the long term, there were still 2-3 years of peak prime left and another 2-3 years of decent post prime years likely to be seen.

We made some immediate room for a rookie to play more. That rookie cannot be expected to immediately replace Devers' bat, nor ever replace it, fully or maybe in any significant proportion.

The big plus has to come from how Brez spends the money (not if he spends it.) We may get something from the return players and prospects, but the bulk has to come from the FAs we sign or the big ticket players we can afford to trade for. The fact that this is all in the future and speculative, makes us go right back to the waiting game, once again. Some of us thought we had just gotten over that 5-6 year phase. Now, we are back to square one with perhaps a bit more hope in the kids, especially Narvaez, Rafaela, Bello and Dobbins. The big three have yet to prove anything, but we may not need all 3 to do so, at least right away. (To win, this year, we will.)

I can see how those who turned on Devers weeks ago are rejoicing over this, but we just took a gut punch to our line-up, and there is no getting around that fact. It's hard to not think of this as anything more than a punt on 2025, even if we trade for someone like Hoskins or a solid, higher-priced rental pitcher. I called it a third down punt, because this is mid June, and we are far from 4th down and long.

I'm not thrilled it came to this, but more and more, it looks to me like this needed to be done, and not paying anything to SFG could really help us, assuming we spend like we did, this past winter, again this coming winter.

I have to think this would be  a better team:

(Sign Cease, Naylor & Helsley and trade Casas & Duran for another solid pitcher)

1. Mayer SS

2. Bregman 3B

3. Abreu-Refsnyder RF

4. Naylor 1B

5. Narvaez C

7. Anthony LF

8. Story/Campbell 2B

9. Rafaela/Campbell CF

Bench: Wong, Ref/Abreu, Story/Campbell/Rafaela, Romy or Toro

SP: Crochet, Cease, __trade___, Bello, Sadnoval (Dobbins, Crawford, Houck, Harrison, Fitts)

RP: Helsley, Whitlock, Hicks, Slaten, Houck, Crawford, Dobbins, Harrison/Fitts/Weissert/Bernardino...

4 minutes ago, king koji said:

The Sox have definitely been "in transition" the last 5-6 years after winning the 2018 World Series. Right now I believe they're at 19th in Payroll AFTER the Devers trade. Had Soto been signed, and they DID try with all their might to sign him IMHO, they would be much higher.

As I see it the Sox stand to be in high contention the latter half of this Decade (2026-30) and beyond.

Not giving Mookie the Contract the Dodgers did looks to be a definite error as of right now. But let's see how it ages as Mookie's OPS has been dropping with age.

Getting out from under Xander Bogaerts can ONLY be counted as a tremendous win for the Organization. Padres could be stuck with the worst Contract in Baseball on that one.

Once these 2 guys were jettisonned I was wholly against signing Devers, as I wanted the FULL "re-build" at that point. So I can't say I'm upset at losing Devers and just about EVERY esteemed Baseball writer ranked Devers Contract as "underwater," ie: not good.

With 4 Titles under our belt, patience is something we can afford, and we will be riding the backs of our maturing young talent combined with astute Free Agent signings (Kyle Tucker?) going forward.

Good times are a 'comin (IMHO)

Good post.

Note: Spotrac has us right at the tax line, cots has us $3M under, soxprospects.com's podcast has us still being over the line. This is a change from previous years, even after the Devers salary dump trade.

19 hours ago, Nick said:

“But far more important than the player return is the fact that they were able to move Devers and all of his money."

There you have it....quit bitching about the return. If we get any upside, we win the trade.

The new word of the Day....REPURPOSE....yep it matters the most how we REPURPOSE the money we saved, $240M or so.

Yes, "repurpose" is the new buzzword for today.  

I like the fact that Breslow made the trip to Seattle to talk to the team face to face.  I also really like what he had to say regarding the trade, including repurposing the money.  I don't want to see it going towards another huge contract, but the team now has a lot of financial flexibility to address our needs at the deadline and also going forward into next season.

8 hours ago, Bellhorn04 said:

More from Big Papi:

"You cannot imagine how many times I wrote to Devers trying to give him advice...he almost never returned my messages."

Wow.  Pretty strange that Devers wouldn't communicate with Ortiz, who would seem like one of the first people on the planet he should be listening to.

This is interesting, indeed.  I always felt like Papi was a pretty big mentor for Devers.

Judging from what little was said on the game telecast last night, the other players seem to be on board with the trade.

6 hours ago, mvp 78 said:

The most word salady sentence ever said. 

I was actually very pleased with what Breslow had to say.  I thought he explained things well without tearing down Devers.  Also, there was the mandatory 'not waving the white flag' comment.  Now it remains to be seen what the FO actually does from this point.

5 hours ago, moonslav59 said:

I'm not sure I can believe anything I read, these days, but there is a report that multiple sources confirmed that Devers was upset at Campbell for volunteering to play 1B, and that this undermined him.

Either way, I think more was going on than we are aware of.

That's the thing, none of us really knows exactly what was going on.  Regardless, I don't think Devers was setting a good example for the youngsters, and that can't be a good thing.

3 hours ago, mvp 78 said:

The also were looking into Arenado. You frame it as "we're looking to upgrade everywhere. We may get a 3b and need you to move DH if they have a great glove. We may get a 1B and need to move Triston instead. We're just trying to put the best ballclub on the field." 

I do agree with you that better communication might have prevented all of this from happening.

3 hours ago, Nick said:

I think the Sox ultimately got what they wanted. A short term, higher AAV guy at 3B, who can hit and play better defense, and got rid of 8 1/2 years of 10 year, $313M contract. Bottom line.

I do think Bres is salivating at that prospect of 'repurposing' the freed up money. He did not sign Devers and probably would never do that.

I'm surprised Bloom signed Devers to that contract.  As I've stated before, I think Henry and the FO caved to the pressure.

3 hours ago, Kimmi said:

That's the thing, none of us really knows exactly what was going on.  Regardless, I don't think Devers was setting a good example for the youngsters, and that can't be a good thing.

I do wonder if I'm reaching for reasons to not be so upset about losing our best hitter, but I think there was more going on in the clubhouse that was not good, than we know of.

I'm glad we got something for Devers, and we don't have to pay a penny. The Hicks deal is a little costly, but not by enough to think badly about the contract.

If JH tightens the purse, again, we will back as square one, again, but I'm not as doubtful as I was when the last few winters began.

I'm thinking we may even see a deadline deal or two that costs JH some cash. I'm not talking James Paxton, Luis Garcia and Lucas Sims cash, here.

1 hour ago, dgalehouse said:

But isn't WAR supposed to measure his value against a replacement D.H. ? Defense and base running should not be big factors. D.H. is a different kind of job. Not to be compared to a " complete player". 

WAR gives positional value as well as defensive value (plus or minus.) DHs are not compared to other DHs in determining the WAR value. We do that.

That is one reason DHs and to some extent 1Bmen are rarely WAR leaders, and SSs are often more highly ranked than their offense seems to indicate they should be.

Take Bogey, for example, although he has never been a plus defender at SS, he was awarded value for playing such a tough position. On his value page for his career, these are his totals:

+149 Offense (+122 hitting and +27 Baserunning)

+35 Defense (-28 Fielding, but +62 "Positional")