It was May 9, 2009 and the Oakland A's and Tampa Bay Rays swung a trade that sent infielder Adam Kennedy to the A's in exchange for a player to be named later.
So, yes, Chaim Bloom has been part of an organization that has made a trade on May 9. This year ... Don't hold your breath.
Despite the Red Sox' uncomfortable existence - sitting nine games under .500 and 10 games in back of the first-place Yankees - Bloom doesn't seem keen on fixing things at this point via deals.
“I think we should be open to making trades at any point if it’s something that helps the organization," Bloom said in a meeting with the media at Fenway Park Saturday afternoon. "Typically it’s easier to do those at times of year when all 30 teams are talking, but I would say almost always there’s at least some kind of conversation you’re having with at least one team. Different teams are in different places with this. I do think if you’re making a decision in response solely to what’s happened in the first 30 days of the season, more often than not — every decision is on a different timetable, but more often than not, you’re opening yourself up to doing something you’re going to regret. And there are a lot of examples of that.
"You don’t have to go too far back, even looking last year, a couple of guys that struggled mightily out of the gate — obviously our group as a whole was doing better — but those guys became massive contributors the rest of the way, and we would have been really poorly served panicking and giving up on them that early. Conversely, we’ve got guys here and some of the best moves I’ve been a part of in my career have been acquiring players that we believed in that went through struggles that were a heckuva lot longer than just a month. But if the ingredients are there and you believe in them, then it’s worth giving them some runway. That doesn’t mean that everything that’s happening is going to flip and all these guys that are struggling are going to be great the rest of the way. But, as much as I think we should be open and willing to do business at any point, we need to be careful being too reactive to a month of baseball and doing something that we’ll regret."
For historical context, Bloom was also with the Rays when they swung a May 13 deal with the Mets, sending New York Wilmer Font for a player to be named later.
Perhaps the most notable mid-May trade came on May 14, 1998 when the Marlins sent Manuel Barrios, Bobby Bonilla, Jim Eisenreich, Charles Johnson and Gary Sheffield to the Los Angeles Dodgers for Mike Piazza and Todd Zeile.
The Red Sox pulled off an impactful early-season trade on May 29, 2003, sending starting third baseman Shea Hillenbrand to Arizona for pitcher Byung-Hyun Kim.
