Andrew Benintendi is the No. 1 prospect in baseball, a 22-year-old outfielder with a bright future ahead of him on the Boston Red Sox.
But apparently Benintendi thought he might have to buy some new “Sox” this offseason.
Boston pulled off a blockbuster trade in December by acquiring left-handed ace Chris Sale from the Chicago White Sox in return for several top prospects, including Yoan Moncada and Michael Kopech. Benintendi was rumored as a possible trade option for the Red Sox, though, and claimed he was sweating it out on the day of the big trade.
“My agent texted me and said, ‘You’re either going to go or not in the next two minutes,'” Benintendi told reporters Monday at the team’s spring training facility in Fort Myers, Fla., via MassLive.com. “So, I was just like, ‘OK, there’s not much I can do.’ So, after that two minutes went up, I saw everything on Twitter and people were texting me. It was a big move for both sides.”
According to Red Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski, Benintendi didn’t need to sweat that much. Dombrowski told reporters Monday the team wasn’t willing to include its talented young outfielder in a trade for Sale.
“We were never planning on it,” Dombrowski said in a press conference aired on NESN. “That was not a goal of ours to trade him. We like him a lot. …Â We never came close to trading him in the wintertime.”
Benintendi took over Boston’s starting left field job last season amid an impressive major league debut. And in Dombrowski’s eyes, that role is his to lose.
“We’re looking at him as a starter with our big league club,” Dombrowski added of Benintendi. “We look at him as being our left fielder this year. For me, we had Moncada, who we liked a great deal, but Moncada we didn’t look at the same way where we really penciled him in (as a starter).
Thumbnail photo via Kim Klement/USA TODAY Sports Images
