That appears to be the only reasonable excuse.
I know I caught grief for saying Bloom/Henry buckled to crybaby fans, and that was a poor choice of words, but I stand by my position that we gave up a golden opportunity to significantly improve our future outlook (Yes, Red, nothing is guaranteed next year and beyond) to give the fans a false sense of trying to stay competitive, this year. As it turned out, the players media and much of Sox Nation were still pissed off we traded Vaz and didn't trade for more key pieces. We played it halfway and lost the season, anyway.
We did slightly improve our longer term outlook, and in hindsight, McGuire & Pham have outplayed Vaz and Diekman since the deadline, but apparently, to Sox Nation, we packed it in on deadline day. Would trading JD with $2.4M really made things any worse?