Ben Cherington is waiting to see how things unfold.
The Boston Red Sox general manager hasn’t committed to buying or selling with the Major League Baseball non-waiver trade deadline less than a month away. He’s instead assessing his team’s chances of playing its way into playoff contention — much like he did last July — before making any major moves.
“We’re in a unique baseball market with fans and support that’s different than a lot of places,” Cherington told the Providence Journal this week in Toronto. “We respect that. We have an obligation to give the fans our best shot every year. That’s the way the business model is set up, and the baseball model is a reflection of that.”
The Red Sox returned home Friday following a 5-2 road trip against the Tampa Bay Rays and Toronto Blue Jays. They sat six games back in the American League East, which represented a four-game improvement over where they stood as recently as June 20. Finally, things are trending upward.
But while it’s natural to scoreboard watch while trying to climb the standings, Cherington and Co. are prioritizing their internal happenings. After all, one must win games in order to make up ground.
“I’m sure there will be some noise in the division between now and the end of July, but we really can’t worry about anyone else but ourselves,” Cherington told the Boston Herald after Thursday’s 12-6 win over the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre. “No matter what, our focus is going to be trying to improve, win and build the best team we can as soon as we can. Hopefully that will manifest directly to this year.”
The Red Sox, who faced a similar situation in 2014, waited until roughly a week before the trade deadline to make their first significant move (trading Jake Peavy to the San Francisco Giants). And the real fire sale didn’t occur until the day of the deadline. As such, Cherington is content seeing how everything plays out over the next few weeks. A short stretch — good or bad — isn’t going to sway him.
“Well, no,” Cherington told the Boston Herald after Thursday’s game when asked if his outlook had been changed by the Red Sox’s success over the last 10 days. “Because we were going to give this thing as long as we can anyway. I don’t think anything would’ve changed it this early. But it’s certainly good. You have to play well in your division, and we’re starting to do that. It was a good road trip.”
Cherington is on standby and ready to act. He just needs to see which direction the Red Sox are going this season before pulling the trigger on anything substantial.
Thumbnail photo via Twitter/@ScottLauber
