Are Boston Red Sox Better Off Without Rafael Devers?
It's been one year since the Red Sox sent their star slugger to San Francisco. Is the team better off for it?
Video Transcript
What's up everyone?
Zach Coe here for Roundtable.
It has officially been three hundred and sixty-five days since Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow made the most decisive move of his career at the time, trading Rafael Devers to the San Francisco Giants, setting in motion the turmoil that we've seen over the last year.
I wanted to take a minute to talk about whether or not the Red Sox are actually better off without their star designated hitter, third baseman, now first baseman in San Francisco.
It's something that I've called one of the worst trades in Red Sox history because of the ripple effect that it had on the organization, going to where the Red Sox find themselves today.
In the seventy-four games before trading Devers in twenty twenty-five, the Red Sox offense ranked top ten in baseball in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, home runs, runs scored, and weighted runs created plus.
In the hundred and fifty-seven since the trade, it ranks twenty-eighth in home runs, eighteenth in runs scored, fourteenth in slugging percentage, and twenty-first in isolated power.
And really the main reason that the Red Sox find themselves at twenty-nine and forty and in distant last place in the American League East is because they have an offense that simply doesn't have enough firepower to win baseball games, and it's a problem that everybody saw coming throughout the off-season.
Now, I'm not here to argue that the twenty twenty-five Red Sox were not better off without the drama that Devers caused throughout the season, but I think the organization played a massive part in that drama because of the way they handled the Alex Bregman free agency saga and his eventual signing.
Not to mention the return for Devers is just absolutely awful.
I think everybody is well aware of the moves that led to the return looking like this.
But in total, the Red Sox traded Devers, Shane Drohan, David Hamilton, Zach Earhart, and David Sandlin for Caleb Durbin, Andrew Monasterio, Anthony Siegler, Gage Ziel, and Jos Bello, along with twenty-eight and a third innings in twenty twenty-five from Dustin May.
Of course, the biggest return for the Red Sox was simply getting out from under the twen- two hundred and forty-one million dollars that Devers was owed over the next eight years.
But they didn't do anything to replace that production with that newfound money, so that's just two hundred and forty million dollars back in the pocket of John Henry.
When the Red Sox traded Devers, they handed the keys to the franchise to Bregman, who was effectively on a one-year contract and then well overplayed their hand in free agency that led to him signing with the Cubs.
If you were gonna make a move as bold as trading Devers, it had to be contingent on locking up Bregman to a long-term deal, because now in twenty twenty-six you're stuck with one of the worst offenses in baseball, no Rafael Devers and no Alex Bregman, and you have nobody to blame but yourself.
And yes, Devers has struggled slightly in his first year in a Giants uniform, hitting only two thirty-five with a seven sixty-two OPS and twenty-nine home runs in exactly a hundred and sixty-two games, all while playing first base.
I am a staunch believer that these struggles wouldn't be happening with the Red Sox because Devers spent his entire career hitting at Fenway Park, tailoring his swing to play off the Green Monster.
It's something that he did so well in his time here, and it's what made him such a great player.
He now goes to San Francisco, one of the most pitcher-friendly environments in the entire league, and is experiencing struggles.
Like, that to me is the most obvious outcome of all time.
I, like I said, don't necessarily have a problem with trading Devers, but everything that's followed the trade leading to the Red Sox having one of the worst offenses in baseball this year en route to being one of the most disappointing teams in the entire sport, that doesn't sit right with me, and it's really tough for me to say that they're better off without him as a result of that
