Won’t somebody please think of the children?
The Boston Red Sox brass want to create the best possible space for their young talent to succeed – and according to the message they’re putting out, that’s a clubhouse without Rafael Devers.
“We have a number of young players who are in the big leagues and we're really excited about them. We're very deliberate and intentional about the environment we want to create,” Craig Breslow told media on an 8 p.m. zoom meeting the day after trading their designated hitter.
Never mind how Breslow and crew found a team willing to eat Devers’ $254 million salary, but settled for a baseball trade that makes the major league team immediately less talented. The front office paints this trade as the product of a cultural breakdown between a homegrown star and the franchise, and a situation that was broken beyond repair.
“Maybe we need to look back at things we could handle better. But it’s definitely a two-way street. We didn’t get to the alignment we needed in the best interest of the Boston Red Sox, so we made the decision that we made,” Sox president Sam Kennedy said via zoom.
The Red Sox’ whole breakup press conference carried the weight of sitcom parents explaining a split to the family. In this case, rather than staying than staying together for the kids, it looks like the Red Sox wanted to move Devers before he became the wrong kind of role model for the budding Big 3 of Marcelo Mayer, Roman Anthony, and Kristian Campbell.
“Basically, what this is, is the team comes first,” former Red Sox player and color commentator Lou Merloni told WEEI Afternoons Monday.
“You could make the argument that with such a young roster, those guys just learned the business really quick,” he continued. “Those guys are like, ‘Holy smokes, we just traded Raffy Devers because he wasn’t willing to put the team first.’ So they may have sent the right message to a young locker room, but you still want to go out there and win ball games and put the best team on the field.”
Boston is now down a three-time All Star whose current .905 OPS is the second-best of his nine-year career. Even without Devers’ bat, they were able to top the Seattle Mariners’ 2-0, thanks in part to Anthony’s first home run since being called up from Triple-A Worcester.
The Sox have now won eight of their last nine games and move into the lone third Wild Card position in the American League. Part of what the shock around Devers’ trade announcement was how it came on the heels of a sweep of the New York Yankees at Fenway park, after the Sox had taken two series from their rivals in one week.
It’s been an up-and-down season for the Sox’ most experienced youngster, Kristian Campbell. Campbell made the big-league roster for Opening Day, but he’s batting just .227 over 65 games, and has committed seven errors. Interestingly, former ESPN write Joon Lee published a story this week including a nugget about how Campbell’s attempt to step into Tristan Casas’ first-base role irked Devers, who refused to move from DH to first base after Casas went down with a season-ending injury:
“According to multiple sources, Devers was also upset when the rookie Campbell volunteered to play first base this season — interpreting it as a slight to his own stature,” Lee wrote.
That sort of petty, passive aggressiveness is toxic to a locker room, but remember that Devers was once a young guy in the Red Sox organization as well – a 21-year-old on the last World Series-winning team. He never stepped into the leadership void left by Xander Bogaerts, and he never had the versatility and overall talent of Mookie Betts.
The last round of young pups have all officially graduated to baseball on the West Coast. The Red Sox would like everyone to please, turn their attention to the new, young stars. They couldn’t have their best hitter poisoning the well.