How Alex Cora-Aaron Boone Exchange Foreshadowed Alex Verdugo Trade

Red Sox manager Alex Cora hinted Tuesday at the Major League Baseball winter meetings that the New York Yankees might have something up their sleeve.

“I called (Yankees manager) Aaron Boone (Monday), FaceTimed him, and he gave me this kinda-like smile, this look,” Cora told reporters in Nashville, per MassLive’s Chris Cotillo. “He was very happy. So, something big might happen over there.”

A few hours later, the Red Sox and Yankees completed a trade sending outfielder Alex Verdugo to New York in exchange for three pitchers.

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Coincidence? Maybe. We don’t know what Cora and/or Boone knew when they spoke Monday. Heck, maybe Boone was smirking about something entirely different — like, say, the Yankees potentially acquiring All-Star outfielder Juan Soto from the San Diego Padres.

But it’s nevertheless funny in hindsight. Whether they intended to or not, Boone (by giving the “look”) and Cora (by sharing the exchange with reporters) basically foreshadowed the Verdugo trade.

Now, does the Verdugo deal qualify as “something big” in the grand scheme of things? Not necessarily, especially with the Soto trade rumors swirling and Shohei Ohtani’s free agency dominating offseason headlines. It’s been a relatively slow MLB winter meetings from an actual transaction standpoint, though, and it’s always shocking to see the Red Sox and Yankees do business.