Sometimes the best trades are the ones you don’t make … or even consider.
We’re not going to sit here and say for sure that the Boston Red Sox and New York Mets ever considered a swap centered around shortstop Xander Bogaerts and pitcher Matt Harvey, and the next 600 words or so are admittedly written with the benefit of hindsight, but it was at least thrown out there on multiple occasions in recent years.
The Red Sox and Mets have seemed like natural trade partners for a few years now. The Red Sox have a relative abundance of good young position players, but to say there are questions about starting pitching depth would be an understatement. The Mets’ pitching staff, meanwhile, has been the talk of baseball for the last two or three seasons, but as we saw in the World Series, there’s just not enough firepower.
So, fans and media alike pondered over the last year or two whether a trade might make sense. Just last September, The Boston Globe’s Nick Cafardo wondered in his Sunday notes column whether the Red Sox should consider trying to trade for Harvey with Bogaerts as the centerpiece going to New York.
In November, the New York Daily News’ John Harper brought it up, too, also saying an attempt to acquire Red Sox outfielder Mookie Betts could be even more attractive. Of course, Harper brought it up just to shoot it down.
“And no, to the many Mets fans on Twitter who demanded both for Harvey, there’s no chance,” Harper wrote. “In fact, one American League GM said the Sox value Bogaerts and Betts so highly that they may not see three years of Harvey as enough for either one.”
Even into the offseason, the Red Sox reportedly had interest, as the Boston Herald’s Michael Silverman reported earlier this season.
“This is exactly what the Red Sox did in the offseason, when they spoke with the White Sox about Chris Sale, the Mets about Matt Harvey and the A’s about Sonny Gray,” Silverman wrote. “The responses over the winter tended to be along the lines of ‘Let’s start with the names of Xander Bogaerts and Mookie Betts,’ a conversational non-starter if there ever was one.”
And obviously on Twitter and the blogosphere, the idea was bandied about for quite some time. If it isn’t obvious, it should be by now: The Red Sox did well not to trade Bogaerts (or Betts) for Harvey.
Duh.
Harvey pitched his tail off last fall. He was especially good when the Mets needed him most, allowing just two runs over eight innings in a do-or-die Game 5 the Mets ultimately lost to the Kansas City Royals.
But it certainly seems like the damage was done with that postseason push, which came just a year after Harvey missed the entire 2014 season following Tommy John surgery. He’s been dreadful this season, going 4-10 with a 4.86 ERA, striking out 7.4 batters per nine innings, a far cry from the 9.5 career rate he owned entering the 2016 season.
The news got even worse this week. The Mets placed Harvey on the disabled list with a shoulder injury, and ESPN.com reported Friday that Harvey will undergo surgery and miss the rest of the season.
The Red Sox’s pitching issues still exist, and maybe another frontline starter is still needed. But Bogaerts continues to develop into one of baseball’s players. His batting average over the last two seasons is .324, and his 2.9 wins above replacement this season are among the league’s best. He’s starting the All-Star Game at shortstop. Oh, and Betts — who has 36 home runs since the start of the 2015 season — also will start in the Midsummer Classic.
We might never know how close the Red Sox might have come to trading Bogaerts, Betts or any of their other young and talented players for Harvey. For all we know, there might never have been any real conversations about such a trade.
Regardless, it’s another cautionary tale as the Major League Baseball trade deadline approaches.
Harvey thumbnail photo via Andy Marlin/USA TODAY Sports Images
Bogaerts thumbnail photo via Mark L. Baer/USA TODAY Sports Images
