The Red Sox front office has come under fire this week for not doing more at the trade deadline to help this year’s team. While Boston is currently just 2.5 games out of a playoff spot and seemed poised to make a push based on its play over the last month, chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom, general manager Brian O’Halloran and company made no significant additions and instead settled for a couple minor moves like bringing in infielder Luis Urias and reliever Mauricio Llovera.
Bloom said after the deadline that he explored numerous possibilities to add, but just couldn’t find a deal that made sense. Appearing on The Greg Hill Show for the Front Office Report on Thursday, O’Halloran took things a step further and suggested that other teams in the playoff race couldn’t find matches either and that there weren’t many “impact players” moved in general. Listen to the full interview below.
“We were hoping to do things that would that would help improve the team,” O’Halloran said. “Over the course of the last couple of weeks, I think we did a number of small things that help us, but we weren't able to line up on anything that was kind of a bigger needle-mover. We talked about a lot of things, but just none of them ended up making sense. I think that's, you kind of see that around the industry. There weren't a lot of impact players that were moved at the deadline. So, you explore all the opportunities, see what's there, and in this case, there wasn't anything big that that we lined up on.”
He doubled down on the idea of other teams not doing much, saying later, “I think there's probably a lot of fanbases, a lot of media folks that are in your roll around the country that probably are saying some similar things.”
It’s a dubious claim. Just looking around the rest of the American League playoff picture:
-The Rangers added starting pitchers Max Scherzer and Jordan Montgomery.
-The Astros traded for Justin Verlander.
-The Angels, who are actually behind the Red Sox right now, acquired pitchers Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo Lopez, outfielder Randal Grichuk and first baseman C.J. Cron.
-The Blue Jays, the team right ahead of the Red Sox and the one they’re facing this weekend, got reliever Jordan Hicks and shortstop Paul DeJong.
-The Rays added a starting pitcher in Aaron Civale.
-So did the Orioles, who landed Jack Flaherty.
The Red Sox have to catch at least one of those teams while also holding off the Angels. How many of those players qualify as “impact players” is subjective, but at the very least we can pretty safely say that all of those teams made more impactful additions than Boston did.
Red Sox fans and local media are used to seeing the team be aggressive in the trade market when they have a chance to make some noise, but Bloom has largely opted to hold onto prospects and take a conservative approach.
While that seems like an organizational shift in philosophy to many on the outside, O’Halloran denied that there has been any change when it comes to how the team approaches trade deadlines.
“I don't think there has been a shift in philosophy,” he said. “I mean, there were years dating back to 2005, 2006 ... I'm not sure if people remember this, but Theo's price of milk analogy. I forget if that was 2005 or 2006. Sometimes you can believe in a team and just not line up on opportunities or not line up on anything major. That's happened numerous times in the past. That's not a shift in philosophy.”
While that may be true, 2005 and 2006 aren’t exactly good precedents to cite. The 2005 Red Sox got swept in the first round of the playoffs by the White Sox. The 2006 squad was 21 games over .500 at the deadline, but collapsed in August and September and wound up missing the playoffs.
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