I fear it cannot.
I’m tired of talking about the Red Sox being bad, but the Red Sox are bad and haven’t improved. A surefire way for improvement, you might believe, would be trading for better players. The trade deadline is still a few weeks away, but often most of the action happens in the days leading up to July 31st. Teams with playoff aspirations usually look to bolster their rosters with trades. But with the playoff picture further and further out of reach for the Red Sox, you have to wonder: Will trades even make things better?
This may all be a hot take: The easy answer is yes, because why wouldn’t it? The more correct answer, I believe, is no. Nobody’s going to want our pitchers who are doing badly, save for possibly a team like Dodgers hoping they can fix Walker Buehler. Nobody’s going to want our inconsistent bullpen arms. There are crappy players we can’t give up due to contracts or symbolic constraints (cough Connor Wong being the last piece of the Mookie trade cough).
So we’re unable get rid of what’s hurting the team, and then why would you get rid of what is good? Trading Duran, for example, seems like an extremely dumb decision because unless the return is a surprisingly good player right now (someone like Fernando Tatis, since there are rumors the Padres are looking at Duran), it doesn’t seem like any return would be anywhere near as beneficial in the here and now. Trading good for good is part of it, yes, but historically, a losing team doesn’t have much to gain at the trade deadline, and even when they do, it’s usually not enough to turn the tides in their favor. One player can’t fix a whole team.
Earlier in the season, we could see the Sox being buyers, but again, with how they’re playing, what’s the point? I honestly think they should sell. Sell the dead weight, sell the players actively harming the team, sell the players with value but no future on the team. I’d love to be wrong. I’d love the trade deadline to actually turn the fortunes of the 2025 Red Sox around. But as things and patterns have been this season, I think hopes for the playoffs are totally lost no matter what you do at the end of July.