Who has Mayor Wu requested a meeting with today?
Welcome back to the Mayor’s Office, our weekly series in which Jake Wallinger sends one naughty member of Red Sox Nation to Mayor Michelle Wu’s office for discipline, public shaming, and penance as we all strive to build a stronger baseball team and city.
After yesterday’s trade deadline, we all know who’s heading downtown this week.
Alright, let’s get into it. The MLB trade deadline has passed. The Red Sox walked away with left-handed reliever Steven Matz and right-handed starter Dustin May, both straight rentals. They sent out three prospects in total: first baseman Blaze Jordan to St. Louis for Matz, and outfielders James Tibbs III and Zach Ehrhard to Los Angeles for May.
But those weren’t the headlines. The big news today was what the Red Sox didn’t do. You all saw the posts. About an hour before the deadline, several baseball insiders shared the news that the Red Sox were desperately trying to acquire Minnesota Twins ace Joe Ryan. Some major baseball accounts even posted as if the deal was done!
Alas, the clock struck six pm EST, and there was no deal. Maybe the Twins were asking too much, maybe the Red Sox were offering too little. It doesn’t really matter. In the end, the deal didn’t get done.
Most Sox fans are rightfully upset that the team didn’t do more. Many are specifically upset that the team couldn’t seal the deal on Ryan. But it’s not really reasonable to be mad at the Sox not acquiring Joe Ryan today. No one did. It is, however, very reasonable to be mad that they didn’t acquire a starter not named Dustin May.
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To put Dustin May into context, his season-long stats are extremely similar (though to his credit slightly better) to Walker Buehler’s. In 104 innings pitched, May boasts a 4.85 ERA to Buehler’s 5.72. I won’t bore you with the rest of his stats. The point here is: Dustin May is not a good pitcher. In fact, he’s a bad one!
For the 2025 Boston Red Sox, who have exactly three trustworthy starting pitchers on the roster, May was simply not enough. Maybe he fills in as their #4 decently. Maybe he shows some flashes and can be their #3 on a good day. But it’s all very unlikely.
Craig Breslow’s big mistake of the trade deadline was not missing out on Joe Ryan (not the point here but if I were a betting man I’d say Ryan is in Boston by New Year’s Day, but that’s neither here nor there), it was not having some semblance of a backup up plan for when Ryan couldn’t get done. The bar to acquire a pitcher better than what the bottom of the Red Sox rotation currently offers was so, so low. And yet, Breslow barely managed to clear it.
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Sox fans joked about Charlie Morton being acquired the last few days, but that would have been leagues better than the reality of Dustin May. It sucks that a 2025 Red Sox roster that has been through so much couldn’t get rewarded with a better acquisition. Instead, the hope is essentially just praying that Kyle Harrison, Connelly Early, or David Sandlin can give you something down the stretch. After a year full of big swings by the Red Sox CBO, it’s a tremendous failure that he couldn’t pull off even a decent swing at the deadline.
Mr. Breslow, Mayor Wu will see you now.
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