It was all quiet on the trade front for the Boston Red Sox on Wednesday afternoon.
The Red Sox, who currently sit 2 1/2 games back of the second American League Wild Card spot, surprisingly didn’t pull the trigger on any moves leading up to the Major League Baseball trade deadline. Boston could have gone in a few different directions leading up to the deadline, which made the club’s total inactivity all the more surprising.
It’s safe to say the Sox had (and still have) one glaring need, however, and ESPN believes their inability to address it qualifies the reigning World Series champs as a trade-deadline loser.
“They needed a reliever. They didn’t get one,” David Schoenfield writes. “But maybe Dave Dombrowski is right: Really, they just need the current guys to pitch better. (Hey, the bullpen does have the second-highest strikeout rate in the majors and if Nathan Eovaldi can get going, maybe the pen will be fine.)”
President of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski admitted Wednesday the Red Sox targeted relief pitching, but the asking price for the arms they were interested in simply was too high. Another report indicates the “only way” Boston would land a top reliever at the deadline was if it did “something stupid.”
It’s understandable for Red Sox fans to be irked by the team’s lack of moves, as the current club effectively has been on the outside looking in at the playoff picture for the entire season. But a true closer is Boston’s top need, and Dombrowski likely would have had to fork over multiple coveted assets in order to fill that void. With an already thin farm system, the risk to make a move of this magnitude evidently was too great.
While the Red Sox did have Craig Kimbrel in their arsenal last season, relief pitching still was a major area of concern as Boston entered the 2018 playoffs. As fate would have it, the bulk of the bullpen turned things around on the biggest stages, while Kimbrel endured quite a bit of struggle throughout the run. It’s now or never for the 2019 Sox, and maybe the highly intensified sense of urgency will spark positive change.
Because at this point, it’s Boston’s only hope.
