Brandon Glick

I think this is a fair take, but both those relievers you mentioned were rentals, and neither of whom are quite as good as Clase is. Clase is earning very little (at least compared to other relievers on the open market) and is still young. Plus, while I, as a Red Sox fan, understand this community's love for Duran, I don't think anyone is valuing him as an All-Star talent right now. I think most would argue that was his ceiling, not the norm. Which, of course, you could argue means that the team should hold onto him in hopes that he boosts his trade value back up, but then you've got an outfield logjam situation at play. The point being: it's going to be messy no matter what you do. Might as well get one of the very best players in baseball if you're going to do something big.

Whatever your feelings on whether Clase is worth the cost, that's going to be the price for him. Chapman, back in 2016 as a rental, was worth two of the better prospects in baseball, plus a MLB reliever. Duran could maybe be the centerpiece of the return, but Cleveland will be able to get a lot more elsewhere on the market if the Red Sox won't include prospects.

For the third straight series, the Red Sox are playing a division-leader in the National League.

With less than a week to go until the trade deadline, I believe it's of the utmost importance to engage in every baseball fan's favorite pastime: confession. Since I don't see any raised hands, I'll volunteer to go first with my scalding hot take for this roster: the Red Sox should still trade Aroldis Chapman before the trade deadline. Yes, despite their pre-All-Star-break ten-game winning streak and current standing as the American League's final wild card, I firmly believe that Boston should trade its All-Star closer. And, yes, this is the same Aroldis Chapman who has a 1.34 ERA and a 39.5% strikeout rate in more than 40 innings this season. So, why do I include such a heinous belief in my rolodex of unassailable baseball convictions? Well, it's the same reason I believe the team should trade Justin Wilson and Walker Buehler (if he has literally any value) at the trade deadline as well: the Red Sox's window of contention extends far beyond this year. Unless you strongly believe that they can win the World Series in 2025 (a notion I admittedly waffle on daily), why should the front office not prioritize the next few seasons, when the "Big Three" prospects are all a little more matured and experienced and, hopefully, there's some reinforcements in the rotation for Garrett Crochet and Brayan Bello? Remember, Chapman is a 37-year-old rental having his best season in ages. This isn't normal, and even if you believe this resurgence is sustainable for the next year or two, he's going to cost a lot of money to re-sign after this golden-age campaign. Wouldn't it be better if the bullpen had a stopper with a little more youth and team control on his side? Wouldn't it be nice if the Red Sox could trade Chapman for a nice haul — perhaps getting back some much-needed starting pitching help — and immediately replace him with Emmanuel Clase? That rumor directly mentions the Cubs, though you can bet every contender under the sun will be bombarding Chris Antonetti's phones while trying to gauge Clase's availability. At 51-51 with a -35 run differential, while playing in the same division as the juggernaut Detroit Tigers, the Guardians may have a hard time convincing themselves that they are on track to repeat or improve upon their ALCS finish last year. If that's the case, they may make their elite closer available. Now, Clase hasn't had his best season. Entering play on May 5, the Guardians' closer had a 5.87 ERA and 1.761 WHIP in 15 1/3 innings. The 27-year-old had given up 11 runs on 24 hits and three walks, a far cry from his performance in 2024 when he finished third in AL Cy Young voting. However, he's righted the ship since, having allowed just four earned runs since the start of May, a stretch of 32 2/3 innings. Thanks to the slow start, his Baseball Savant page isn't quite as jaw-dropping as it's been in years past, but he's still one of the best relievers in all of baseball. In case you need reminding about his credentials, in 74 1/3 innings last year, he led the league in games finished (66) and saves (47), compiling an absurd 0.61 ERA with 66 strikeouts, and a laughable 0.659 WHIP. According to ERA+, Emmanuel Clase was 574% better than the average pitcher in 2024. Five hundred and seventy four percent. For reference, longtime Yankees closer Mariano Rivera has the best career ERA+ in history (205, or 105% better than league average). With one year and $6.4 million ($4 million for luxury tax purposes) remaining on his deal after 2025 — plus two very friendly club options at $10 million per season in 2027 and 2028 — Clase is going to cost a pretty penny at the trade deadline if the Guardians move him. He might very well be the best player on the market, depending on what the Nationals decide to do with MacKenzie Gore. What would a Red Sox trade package for him have to look like? The Guardians need offense in the worst way, particularly in the outfield. Roman Anthony obviously isn't going anywhere, and Craig Breslow likely won't surrender Ceddanne Rafaela following the team's renewed focus on defense, but could Cleveland get them to part with Wilyer Abreu in a deal for Clase? Jarren Duran would be a preferred alternative from the Sox's perspective, but with less team control and nearly three years on Abreu in age, the Guardians might not accept him as the centerpiece for their esteemed fireman. Prospects would likely have to be involved as well — Jhostynxon Garcia stands out as an obvious candidate if the major league outfield isn't pilfered — but the overarching idea remains: Clase is going to drain any acquiring team of valuable resources. It's not often a franchise can justify that kind of expenditure on a reliever, but there's few relievers with his track record and team-friendly arrangements. If it feels untenable for the Red Sox to surrender Chapman at the deadline given their playoff positioning, perhaps a trade for one of the great modern closers will make that notion a little more bearable. View full article

I know the team we're playing are all really good (and the Dodgers are up next), but this 1-4 start to the second half is not a good look. Desperate for a win tonight.

Last season, Tanner Houck emerged. After four years of impressive cameos — including a stint in 2022 out of the bullpen — the big right-hander finally got everything to click in one glorious season. Starting 30 games and logging just shy of 180 innings, Houck turned in a tidy 3.12 ERA (3.32 FIP) while leading the American League in home runs allowed per nine innings (0.6). A confluence of factors finally all went his way, and suddenly, the Red Sox had their first All-Star starting pitcher since Nathan Eovaldi in 2021. Fast forward to the offseason, and the Red Sox decided to pair their homegrown ace with yet another White-Sox-developed southpaw, Garrett Crochet. The rotation's outlook changed in a hurry, as the team had two surefire pieces atop their staff heading into a crucial season... or so it appeared. "Surefire" surely wasn't the right term to use for Houck, who has been nothing short of disastrous this season. Through nine starts and 43 2/3 innings, he recorded a ghastly 6.11 FIP, which somehow looks masterful compared to his 8.04 ERA. Nothing was working for him early in the season, as his home run rate skyrocketed, his strikeout rate plummeted, and his walk rate declined from his breakout 2024 campaign. Eventually, the Red Sox had seen enough, placing him on the 15-day injured list with a strained forearm flexor on May 12. That was over two months ago. Now, at last, there is an update on Houck's status, and it is a poor one. There's no guarantee that this injury ends Houck's season, by the initial prognosis doesn't look good. With no given timetable — and another lengthy rehab assignment likely needed whenever he does feel healthy again — no one can count on him contributing to the cause for the remainder of this season. In conjunction with Hunter Dobbins' season-ending ACL injury, the Red Sox will obviously need to acquire one, if not multiple, starting pitchers at the trade deadline if they have any real hopes of competing down the stretch this season. But beyond the scope of the team's current playoff chase, Houck's future is now in as much doubt as his status for this year. His batted ball metrics were all in the bottom quartile among MLB pitchers before he got hurt, and only his chase and ground ball rates clocked in above average. Obviously, his injury hampered his performance, but there's more at play than just pure health issues. Traditionally a three-pitch pitcher, Houck abandoned his seldom-used cutter this year in favor of a seldom-used four-seam fastball. The change didn't yield positive results, as, in 44 offerings, opposing batters hit .600 against the pitch. They posted a ridiculous .839 wOBA and slugged an unfathomable 1.400 against Houck's four-seamer. The sample is tiny, and his expected stats cut all of those numbers practically in half, but suffice to say that pitch, at least in its current form, isn't long for his arsenal. That's a big problem considering that Houck has yet to find a fastball that really suits his pitch mix. He relies on a sinker as his primary heater, but hitters were slugging .533 against that pitch this year, too. Even last year, when Houck's sweeper and splitter were performing better than ever, batters still had an expected slug (xSLG) of .453 and an xwOBA of .382 against the sinker. And, before anyone cites velocity concerns due to his arm issues, it should be noted that Houck was throwing his sinker a whole mile per hour faster this season than last, and his four-seamer was hit 95 mpg on average. A big part of the reason that the team has tried to get Houck to implement a four-seam fastball is his strict movement profile. He's always been tremendous at changing hitter's hand positioning by pitching them inside and outside with pitches that move a lot along the horizontal plane, but take a look at his pitch chart for this year and note how limited the change in movement is across his pitches on the y-axis: His breaking pitches don't sink much and his heaters don't rise much. That's not a recipe for success, and it makes changing hitters' eye levels practically impossible. For a reliever, that kind of arsenal can have some success, but when a starter has to go multiple times through an order, hitters can catch on pretty quickly to the gambit. For those wondering, this same issue was even more exacerbated last year, though his splitter had more vertical drop variance and he threw his sweeper more often than his sinker, which, in my estimation, is his best opportunity to succeed as a guy who likes to pitch backward. None of this condemns Houck to a future in the bullpen or Triple-A or anything like that, but if Houck, 29, is going to be successful in the long-term, he's going to need a reliable fastball. Are the Red Sox the right organization to help him unlock that pitch once he returns from injury? Perhaps, but given their proximity to contention, they may not be able to afford finding out, at least at the major league level. Don't expect a trade while his value is as its lowest, but in just four months, Tanner Houck has gone from "surefire" No. 2 starter to an injury-riddled reclamation project. If someone else prefers to handle the fixer-upper, it wouldn't be the worst decision for the Red Sox to hand him off. View full article

Ahead of a key 2025 trade deadline, Talk Sox reflects on some of the best swaps in Red Sox history. View full video

This is a really important start for Fitts ahead of the trade deadline. He may be pitching for his rotation spot in the final two months of the season.

Alex Cora suggested Roman Anthony will play the outfield more often in the season's second half. What does that mean for the team's incumbent starters? View full video

Another brutal series (and pitching matchup) on tap. Hey, no one said this was gonna be easy.

I'll take one of everything, please.

I'm actually in the opposite boat. Yes, move on from Casas, but doing so at the deadline this year is asking for trouble. What if Campbell's long-term home really is first base (he sure didn't look like a big league second baseman)? Then, you'd need to get a new 2B, not a new 1B. I think grabbing a rental and reevaluating over the offseason is the move here.

I've been worried about the same thing, but I don't think that makes Naylor the better option for this Red Sox team. Plus, if the Diamondbacks really are going to sell at the deadline, you can bet someone else will trade for Naylor, voiding his chance of getting a QO.

You have no idea how much self restraint I had to exercise not to make Santana references in this piece. Thank you for this.

What a series to begin the second half. The hottest team in baseball at Wrigley Field to face the NL Central-leading Cubs.

When the Red Sox made the baffling decision to trade Rafael Devers in the middle of the season — in the midst of a hot streak, no less — one of the through lines the front office used in their attempt to explain the deal was Devers' immaturity. Indeed, it was well-chronicled this year, as Devers didn't play nicely after the team splurged on Alex Bregman in free agency, displacing the franchise star from his usual home at the hot corner. Then, after settling in to life as a full-time designated hitter, Craig Breslow and company asked Devers to cover for the injured Triston Casas at first base, which he was simply unwilling to do. Thus brought about the stunning deal that sent him out of Boston for good, leaving a big hole in the lineup at both DH and first base. With the team seemingly planning to run a set of platoons at those positions — Masataka Yoshida and Rob Refsnyder at DH, Romy Gonzalez and Abraham Toro at first — there's an obvious opening for a trade deadline acquisition to take over in the second half. Our @Alex Mayes wrote up a piece detailing a few of the available first base options on the market, all of whom are half-year rentals. I'd wager that the least exciting option of the bunch is actually the best target for the 2025 Red Sox. Carlos Santana is a 39-year-old former catcher playing in his 16th MLB season. He's been a mainstay in the league since 2010, when he first burst onto the scene as a hard-hitting backstop with the Cleveland Guardians. After a strong decade in Ohio, he entered the nomadic phase of his career, slowly transitioning to first base as his body couldn't handle the wear and tear of catching. He arrived in Minnesota in 2024 as a full-timer at the cold corner and promptly won the only Gold Glove of his career, and he's carried over some of that success in his triumphant return to Cleveland this season. It wasn't long ago that the Guardians looked like a postseason contender, but whereas the Red Sox launched themselves back into the fray with a ten-game winning streak prior to the All-Star break, Cleveland took itself out of it with a ten-game losing streak. Santana is playing on a one-year, $12 million contract and has been taking his career year-to-year recently. He wouldn't cost much in terms of prospect capital or financial commitment, making him a perfect fit for a team that may still toe the line between selling and buying at the trade deadline. Offensively, Santana isn't quite the voracious slugger he once was, but he's still plenty productive. Through 89 games (360 plate appearances this season), the veteran is slashing .232/.328/.360, good for a 98 wRC+. His ISO (.129) is down near career-low levels, but his walk (11.9%) and strikeout rates (18.6%) remain positively elite. It's also worth pointing out that his numbers are being dragged down by a disastrous June. In 23 games (90 plate appearances) last month, the 39-year-old slashed .169/.233/.253, good for a pitiful 38 wRC+. His strikeout rate ballooned to 25.6% while his walk rate (7.8%) fell off a cliff. Luckily, he's regained some footing in July, hitting .227/.320/.386 (102 wRC+) in the few weeks leading up to the All-Star break. His strikeout (14.0%) and walk rates (12.0%) have stabilized, and he's back to limiting the soft contact off his bat. It's not quite equivalent to when he produced a ridiculous 182 wRC+ in May, but a better-than-league-average bat still exists inside the switch hitter. Of course, offense isn't the only reason you'd be bringing someone so long in the tooth in. Santana has become a great defender at first base in recent years, and he's on pace for perhaps his best season with the glove yet. His seven Outs Above Average put him on pace to match the 14 OAA he gave Minnesota in 2024, and his seven Defensive Runs Saved nearly match the eight DRS from last year in half the innings. Compared to what Gonzalez (-1 OAA in 224 innings) and Toro (-3 OAA in nearly 325 innings) have given the Red Sox, Santana's defense alone would be worth the price of admission. Also, and this should be obvious from the preamble of this article, Santana is a natural-born leader. From his time as a catcher on a team that made the World Series in 2016 to his recent journeyman swing, he knows how to command the attention of the locker room. And, not that it would be wise to ask him to do so, you can bet the 39-year-old would change positions if it was in the best interest of the team. It's been nearly a decade since he made the World Series with the Guardians, and he hasn't gotten particularly close to returning since. Odds are, he'd do nearly anything on the diamond for the sake of winning. Staring up at a 12-game deficit in the AL Central while in a virtual tie for second with the Minnesota Twins and Kansas City Royals, FanGraphs gives Cleveland a meager 10.3% chance of making the postseason (and an almost-nonexistent 0.7% chance of usurping the Tigers for the division crown). They may only be 4.5 games out of the third Wild Card spot, but they'd need to leap all of the Royals, Twins, Angels, Rangers, Rays, and Mariners to make the dance. It'd be difficult for them to trade Santana, long a fan favorite who willingly chose to return in what could be the swan song of his career, but it's the right decision given his rental status. The Red Sox would be wise to capitalize on the Guardians' unfortunate circumstances. Bringing in Carlos Santana wouldn't just lengthen the lineup and vastly improve the infield defense—it would give the clubhouse another leader. On a team with so many budding young stars, the importance of that can't be overstated. View full article

The Cubs and Red Sox have similar trade deadline needs in the rotation, but can the two franchises agree to a deal that pulls from both rosters' strengths? View full video

The 2025 MLB Draft will again feature just 20 rounds, but there has been a format change. After downsizing from a two-day, 40-round draft to a three-day, 20-round draft, Major League Baseball has now gone to a two-day, 20-round draft. The final 17 rounds (from Rounds 4-20) will happen later today, beginning at 11:30am EST. You can catch it live on MLB Network and MLB.com. The Destination: The Show crew would like to invite you to join us live as we cover the final rounds of the draft There hasn't been a 17-round draft day in a while, but rest assured — there used to be 20-round days, so Talk Sox will have the capacity to cover the duration. After selecting four players on Sunday during the first day of the draft, the Red Sox will make 17 picks on Monday: 118th overall (Round 4) 148th overall (Round 5) 178th overall (Round 6) Following Round 5, the Red Sox will pick 13th in every round for the remainder of the draft. Thus, their draft position is as follows: 178, 208, 238, 268, etc. The Red Sox will have the 13th-largest bonus pool ($12,409,300) in baseball. As a reminder from Baseball America: "In the MLB draft, each pick inside the first 10 rounds comes with assigned slot values. The sum of those slot values creates each team’s bonus pool. From rounds 11-20, players can sign for up to $150,000 without counting towards the bonus pool. Anything beyond that value does count towards the pool." It's also important to remember that teams can exceed their bonus pool allotment by up to five percent before incurring any future pick penalties. No team in bonus pool era has ever exceeded that additional five percent threshold. Once again, Talk Sox will feature the Red Sox Draft Tracker, which will be kept up-to-date not only during the draft but through the entire signing period. So keep coming back for updates! View full article