The Red Sox very well could have been sellers ahead of the Major League Baseball trade deadline. After all, Boston entered Tuesday at .500 and three games back of the last American League Wild Card spot.
But when all was said and done and the wheeling and dealing across the big leagues concluded, Chaim Bloom and company only traded away one player on the club’s active roster.
Of course, that player wasn’t the 26th man. Christian Vázquez had been one of the Red Sox’s most consistent players this season prior to his trade to the Houston Astros, and he was a leader in the locker room. But Boston elected to hang onto a few equally important players who were brought up in trade rumors, including J.D. Martinez and Nathan Eovaldi.
When it came to Eovaldi, specifically, the Red Sox reportedly weren’t going to move off the hard-throwing right-hander unless they received an overwhelming offer.
“Per sources, 4-5 teams had heavy interest in Eovaldi but asking price was ‘the moon,'” WEEI’s Rob Bradford tweeted before Boston’s eventual 2-1 win over Houston.
The Boston Globe’s Alex Speier heard similar things about Eovaldi and the rest of the club’s veterans on expiring deals.
“(It) felt like they just wanted to see if someone would get dumb,” an American League talent evaluator told Speier.
The Red Sox clearly value Eovaldi to the utmost degree, as his expiring contract alone seemingly would have made him a logical trade candidate. But Boston still has a real shot at securing a postseason berth, and Eovaldi figures to play a major role if the Sox end up playing beyond the first week of October.
Time will tell if these upcoming months are Eovaldi’s last with the Red Sox. But for what it’s worth, the veteran fireballer isn’t looking to go anywhere.
