Sam Kennedy Says No Red Sox Player Is Untouchable As Trade Deadline Looms

Like everything else this baseball season, the trade deadline is going to be weird.

Because of the delayed start to the season, the deadline is set for Aug. 31, but it’s unclear how aggressive (or not) teams are going to be because of the truncated season.

So for a team like the Boston Red Sox, who realistically could make the postseason but at the moment would be considered a distant contender to win the World Series, it means they more likely would be a seller at the deadline than a buyer.

But with the deadline under three weeks away, Sox president and CEO Sam Kennedy indicated that with respect to trade conversations, nobody on the Red Sox roster is untouchable — though he did issue an important caveat.

“You look at this team and we still have a really young group of core players that you’d like to see with the Red Sox for a long, long time,” Kennedy said Thursday on WEEI’s “The Greg Hill Show.” “We’d never label anyone untouchable, just given the fact that sometimes to re-tool and restructure for the future, you do have to sometimes make difficult decisions, as you saw with the Mookie (Betts) transaction. I don’t think anybody would be untouchable as it were, but there are certainly guys who have grown up in the system that we’d like to keep with the Sox for a long, long time.”

The Red Sox currently are four games back in the wild card race, and six out of the division.

More Red Sox: Ron Roenicke Has Blunt Message After Boston’s Loss Vs. Rays