MLB
“I do think that there is a real chance that at the end of the season, we’re looking back and we’ve won more games than we otherwise would have.”
More than 24 hours after the Red Sox shocked baseball by trading star slugger Rafael Devers to the San Francisco Giants, team president Sam Kennedy and chief baseball officer Craig Breslow fielded questions from the media via Zoom.
Monday’s 45-minute Zoom call covered topics ranging from the impasse between Devers and Boston’s top brass and the Red Sox’s focus on culture.
Here are eight takeaways from Monday’s press conference.
‘Something amiss‘
Craig Breslow said the quiet part out loud during his opening comments on Monday’s presser.
“It’d be tough to sit here and say, when you move a player of Raffy’s caliber — when you take that bat out of the lineup, how can I sit here and say that ‘We’re a better team.’ And I acknowledge that,” Breslow said. “On paper, we’re not going to have the same lineup that we did.”
But even with Devers’ elite production at the plate now subtracted from Boston’s lineup, both Breslow and Kennedy routinely harped on the need to prioritize culture and a winning environment as the main impetus for taking a player of Devers’ talent level off the roster.
Breslow and Kennedy didn’t delve into specifics when it came to the season-long drama and discord stirred up between Devers and the front office.
But, Breslow didn’t exactly mince words when sharing his belief that moving a disgruntled Devers was the necessary move.
“I do think that there is a real chance that at the end of the season, we’re looking back and we’ve won more games than we otherwise would have,” Breslow said.
Such a statement could age poorly with a young Red Sox team that can no longer rely on the assured destruction that Devers would wage against opposing pitching staffs for the next eight seasons.
But, Breslow believes that Sunday’s decision to deal Devers had to be done.
“As we think about the identity and the culture and the environment that’s created by great teams, there was something amiss here,” Breslow said. “And it was something that we needed to act decisively to course correct.”
“What it keeps coming to is this idea that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, that each individual is contributing and finding a way to help a team win,” Breslow added of Boston’s ideal culture. “It’s the willingness to step up and sacrifice at times of need and essentially do whatever’s necessary to help the team win. And I think that’s the identity, this relentless pursuit of winning, that we’re looking for.
Protecting the youth movement
Devers might have held court as Boston’s top player in 2025, but the Red Sox’ roster this year has fully embraced a youth movement.
Over the last few weeks, the Red Sox have featured as many as four rookies (Roman Anthony, Marcelo Mayer, Kristian Campbell, and Carlos Narvaez) in the lineup during games.
That influx of young talent offers hope for the future, even if it might equate to some growing pains in the present.
But as Boston’s young players look to find their footing at the big-league level, the Red Sox were reportedly concerned that Devers’ discontent with the team and his refusal to switch positions after moving to DH would send the wrong message to this rookie class, per MassLive’s Sean McAdam.
Breslow acknowledged that the Red Sox’s desire to fine-tune their culture following Devers’ exit does revolve heavily on the amount of rookies currently in the clubhouse.
“I think culture is always important,” Breslow said. “But I think it’s magnified when you have young players who are coming to the big leagues and trying to acclimate themselves to this lifestyle, expectations and demands and to understanding that they need to convert their emotions from being happy to be here to being willing to do anything that’s needed to win as quickly as possible.
“We’re very deliberate about the environment that we’re creating to support these guys and making sure that the messaging is the right type of messaging, so that three, four, five years from now when there’s another wave of exciting young talent that’s infusing our major league team, they have set the standard that will be easy to pass on.”
A critical “inflection point”
In an ideal scenario, the Red Sox would welcome a future where Devers remained as a fixture in Boston’s lineup.
But after months of tensions between Devers and the Red Sox over his move off third base to accommodate Alex Bregman — and his blunt comments regarding Breslow and Boston’s desire to have him play first base following Triston Casas’ season-ending injury — Kennedy admitted that both parties reached a breaking point.
“In the end, I think it’s pretty clear that we couldn’t find alignment with Raffy. It’s the truth,” Kennedy said. “We all worked at it over the last several months, going back to the offseason — starting with Alex Cora and Craig and the staff, and then up to me, and all the way up to John Henry.
“We worked at it. We had a different vision for him going forward than he had, and we couldn’t get there. We couldn’t find alignment. And we reached that inflection point and made the decision to make a big move.”
Kennedy did not dive into specifics regarding Devers’ discontent with the front office and his murky status in the infield. But, Kennedy’s comments seem to signal that Devers’ refusal to move to first base after Casas went down stood as the final straw.
“In terms of what was missing, it was just that alignment, in terms of what we felt we needed from him that would be in the absolute best interest of the ball club. That’s a non-starter for us,” Kennedy said. “We have to have that. We couldn’t get there.
“And as Bres said, we maybe need to look back at things we could have handled better, but it’s definitely a two-way street, and we didn’t get to the alignment that we needed in the best interest of the of the Boston Red Sox. So we made the decision that we made.”
Regrets from Breslow?
Breslow was asked if, given how this season has played out, he had any regrets over how he handled his communication with Devers and the messaging regarding the slugger’s place in the infield — especially leading up to and especially after the team signed Bregman to take over at third base.
“I think about that question all of the time,” Breslow said. “This is not the outcome that we had expected, and it’s forced me to reflect on the interactions that I’ve had — not just with Raffy, but with other players, and opportunities to communicate differently.
“Any time you get to this point, as Sam said, we reach an inflection point, and you fail to reach alignment — I need to own things that I could have done better. And I don’t know if the outcome would have played out any differently. I think that there’s a decent chance that it wouldn’t have. But I absolutely need to have the humility to think back on the interactions and figure out what I could have done better.”
Kennedy pushed back on the narrative that the Red Sox presented Devers with a lack of clarity during the offseason when it came to finding a replacement at third base, considering that the team didn’t sign Bregman until the start of spring training.
“We did not know until late at night, February 8, that Alex Bregman was coming to Boston. And look, we have a responsibility … to do everything we can to improve the club,” Kennedy said. “And we felt we were doing that by bringing Alex Bregman to the Red Sox.
“And we have a responsibility … to every single player in that clubhouse to do everything in our power to improve the club. So it was something that we were committed to doing and do not regret that for one minute.”
A trade request?
Given the breakdown in communication between Devers and the Red Sox, Breslow was asked if Devers’ definitively issued a trade request at some point this season.
“There were times during the course of conversations with Raffy’s camp where they had indicated that perhaps a fresh start would be best for both sides,” Breslow said. “And we were committed to trying to work through this.
“And like Sam said, ultimately, we weren’t able to achieve that alignment. But this, this does represent that — that chance to reset on our end, and for Raffy to get a fresh start with a historic franchise.”
The Betts trade continues to sting
As painful as Sunday’s trade was for many Red Sox fans, it was not the first time that a former franchise fixture left Boston on bad terms.
The Red Sox have lost several key cogs from that 2018 World Series team via lopsided trades or free-agency exits, including Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts, and Chris Sale.
But even with Boston’s struggles to put together a consistent winning product on the field since that 2018 run, Kennedy opted to look at the franchise’s overall success since the turn of the millenium as proof that the team is still operating effectively — even if the last six years say otherwise.
“I’ll put our record up against anybody else’s in Major League Baseball over the last 24 years. We’re incredibly proud of what we’ve built here,” Kennedy said. “We’ve got more trophies and banners to show for it than any other organization in Major League Baseball, and we are so proud of that.
“And this clubhouse believes in itself, and we believe in them. And I think our players are going to be pretty vocal over the next couple of months about the belief in themselves and what they’ve been put together to do.”
Despite Kennedy’s focus on past success for the Red Sox, he did acknowledge that the Red Sox might hold some regrets on opting to trade away a generational talent in Betts instead of paying him — especially when the player that they did hand a $300+ million contract to in Devers left a lot to be desired in the eyes of the front office.
“We thought we had alignment back when we made the contract a couple years ago. … And you know, ultimately we did not,” Kennedy said of the Red Sox signing Devers to his 10-year extension in January 2023. “So we were responsible for that.
An endorsement of Alex Cora
Despite the breakdown in the relationship between Devers and Boston’s front office, Breslow offered a ringing endorsement of manager Alex Cora and how he navigated a tricky situation when it came to Devers and his role ont the team.
“I think he also understood all of the dynamics here and what we are trying to build in the short term and the long term, and understood the direction,” Breslow said of Cora. “And ultimately, Alex is someone who puts the Red Sox organization first, and so he is behind this and supporting it.
“And I say this with full confidence that I couldn’t imagine a better manager who could handle the player reaction, the clubhouse reaction, the staff reaction to this type of trade, and to get the group focused on tonight’s game.”
A salary dump?
Given the largely underwhelming return that the Red Sox secured from the Giants in exchange for an All-Star like Devers (Jordan Hicks, Kyle Harrison, James Tibbs, and Jose Bello), there has been some speculation that the Red Sox’s top desire in this deal was to find a team to take on the entirely of Devers’ remaining contract.
Breslow said that financial relief wasn’t a mandate, but Boston now has more options moving forward now that the Red Sox have close to $30 million coming off the books for each of the next eight seasons.
“There was no mandate [to move the full contract]” Breslow said. “The mandate is to assemble the best team that we possibly could. In order to do that, we needed to create a more functional roster and give certain guys more playing time, be able to rotate through the DH spot and actually match up there.”
Sign up for the Today newsletter
Get everything you need to know to start your day, delivered right to your inbox every morning.