The details surrounding the Boston Red Sox’s pursuit (or lack thereof) of Giancarlo Stanton, who was just traded from the Miami Marlins to the New York Yankees, are a bit murky.
Talks never seemed to gain any real traction, suggesting either Boston didn’t have much interest in the All-Star outfielder (and/or his contract), Miami’s demands were deemed too high or Stanton, who had a full no-trade clause, didn’t want to play for the Red Sox.
Most likely, the truth lies somewhere in the middle, with several factors playing a role in why the reigning National League MVP isn’t wearing a Red Sox uniform right now. But Stanton’s agent, Joel Wolfe, did clarify in an interview with The Standard-Times that his client would have considered a trade to Boston if it was presented as an option.
“Oh, of course, yeah,” Wolfe told The Standard-Times. “I don’t know what the Marlins said to them, but I can’t imagine that they would’ve said, ‘Hey he doesn’t want to go there, so don’t bother.’ We said, ‘These are our preferences, but we’ll listen to what you have to say.’ ”
Stanton submitted a list of preferred teams before being traded to New York. It included the Yankees, Houston Astros, Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs — the final four teams in the most recent Major League Baseball postseason — but not the Red Sox, something Wolfe claims mostly was a product of Boston already having Mookie Betts, Andrew Benintendi and Jackie Bradley Jr. locked into its three outfield spots for 2018 and beyond.
“I don’t really know,” Wolfe said, per The Standard-Times, of why the Red Sox weren’t on Stanton’s list. “Because, like I was saying, the list kind of morphed over time. And then at the end, it was the four finishers just based on the way he was looking at them. That was a lot of it. But then I think some of it was, ‘Well, I don’t think they would want me anyway just because look at the makeup of their team and the studs they have in the outfield.’ That’s the way we looked at it.”
“We said there’s no way they would want to be in on him just given the quality of the outfielders,” Wolfe added. “They already had those guys are under salary control. So it didn’t seem like it would make sense. And then when we asked the Marlins, they said no, the Red Sox were not in on him.”
Red Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said this week at the MLB Winter Meetings that Boston did all of its homework on Stanton. Ultimately, it just wasn’t meant to be.
