How did this happen?
The baseball gods, feeling generous towards someone if not Red Sox fans, gave us some goddamn poetry last night in Seattle.
Roman Anthony, the youngest player in Major League Baseball and the next great star on a baseball club that tells the story of itself through its stars, hit his first big league home run. In so doing, he became the youngest Red Sox player to homer since the team’s last great star, Rafael Devers, who hit his first big league home run eight years before, in the very same ballpark.
The world writ large — and baseball in particular — does this from time to time: creates a moment so sublime that you can’t help but wonder if it’s worth a damn. It was a romantic moment if it was anything. But it was not a perfect moment, because Devers wasn’t in the dugout to greet Anthony after he rounded the bases. He wasn’t there to shake his hand and say “welcome to the club, kid.” He wasn’t there to give us the first taste of what should have become one of baseball’s deadliest middle-of-the-order combinations for years to come.
That Devers would not be in the dugout for Anthony’s first home run – or, more damningly, for his first 300 home runs – is something that would’ve been inconceivable just two days ago. Worse yet, it is wholly unnecessary. Rafael Devers should still be on the Boston Red Sox today.
Sam Kennedy and Craig Breslow spent a half an hour on a Zoom call with the media last night, emptying their Oxford English Dictionaries of Boardroom Buzzspeak in an attempt to explain why Devers is no longer on the team. We heard about the organization “needing to be in alignment.” We heard about the virtues of acting “decisively and boldly.” We heard them try to explain – though their hearts clearly weren’t in it — that removing the team’s best hitter could, maybe, make the team better. It was painful to watch and worse to listen to, unless you speak whatever language is required to translate this into something that makes sense:
It’s not that this was the best deal that we could get, because the best deal that we could get may not necessarily be good enough to trade a player like Rafael Devers. This is the one that made sense, this is the path we went down, and we ended up where we did.
—Craig Breslow, glitching
There were only two moments during the entire call when Breslow came off more like a human being and less like a beta-tested LLM. To his credit, both of these moments displayed genuine contrition, as he reflected on the mistakes that created this mess.
“I think about that question all of the time,” Breslow said when he was asked if had any regrets about the way he communicated (or didn’t communicate, rather) with Devers in the offseason. “This is not the outcome we expected and it has forced me to reflect on the interactions I’ve had, not just with Raffy but with other players, and opportunities to communicate differently… I absolutely need to have the humility to look back at the interactions and figure out what I could have done better.”
For everything we heard last night about inflection points and team culture and roster flexibility, it was Breslow’s answer about his own failure to communicate that explained the trade better than anything else: The Red Sox are a worse team today because the boss failed to talk openly and honestly with his most important employee; then, neither party had the requisite maturity or good sense to fix things for the betterment of the team.
There were other factors that led to the trade, because there are always other factors: The roster was poorly constructed, the clubhouse culture was in a bad place, and John Henry is never going to let an opportunity to not pay the market rate for a baseball player pass him by. But the root cause of the trade is clear: the Red Sox spent all winter pursuing a replacement for Rafael Devers at third base, all the while telling him that they were not.
If that sounds like an incredibly dumb reason to sever the relationship between a team that’s ostensibly trying to win baseball games and one of the best baseball players on the planet, that’s because it is.
Yes, Rafael Devers acted like a petulant baby when he was asked to change positions (twice), but he is hardly “a clubhouse cancer.” Until this season, we’ve heard nothing but good things about the way he carries himself on the field and in the clubhouse, both from his teammates and team officials. He’s never fired a gun during a violent episode with his girlfriend the way the team’s closer has. He’s never directed a homophobic slur towards a fan the way the team’s leadoff hitter has. He’s never masterminded a scheme to cheat the game of baseball the way the team’s manager and new third baseman have. All he did is respond all too humanly to being jerked around by management. I’ve been there. You have, too.
But what is more worrying is the ultimate reason why management jerked him around in the first place: Craig Breslow never told Rafael Devers that he was going to sign Alex Bregman to play third base, because Craig Breslow had no intention of signing Alex Bregman to play third base.
We’ve memory-holed this now — and they will obviously never cop to it — but all winter we heard reports that the front office was not in alignment in the pursuit of Alex Bregman. Back in December, while both Breslow and Alex Cora were (and I’m going to hit the “this is important button” here because this is important) PUBLICLY DENYING THAT THEY HAD ANY INTENTION OF MOVING RAFAEL DEVERS OFF THIRD BASE, a source told MassLive’s Sean McAdam that, while Cora and Kennedy were pushing hard to add Bregman, much of the rest of the baseball operations staff, including Breslow, were hesitant due to the complicated roster fit. Two months later, on the eve of spring training with Bregman still unsigned, we heard more of the same: “agents have come away believing Alex Cora and Sam Kennedy want to add a middle-of-the-order hitter. But Breslow, John Henry, and Tom Werner have been cautious.”
Craig Breslow didn’t tell Rafael Devers that he wanted to move him off third because he wasn’t planning on moving him off of third base. As the team’s Chief Baseball Officer, he reasonably believed that decision was up to him. It wasn’t, because the Red Sox front office is in disarray. The manager seemingly has a lifetime appointment and way too much influence over personnel decisions. The CBO has almost no experience managing a baseball operations department. The president thinks he can manage a basebal operations department despite all evidence to the contrary. And ownership is too busy signing deals with the Saudi royal family to notice or care. This is a far bigger problem than the lineup being too left-handed or a roster crunch in the outfield.
Rafael Devers acted like a petulant baby. But petulant babies win the World Series all the time. Dysfunctional front offices don’t. And that’s the real thing the Red Sox should be worried about. It’s not Devers’ contract that’s under water, it’s Craig Breslow, who is clearly in way over his head.