Red Sox
One report said that the Red Sox weren’t willing to part with one of their major league outfielders for Ryan.
It’s no secret that Twins ace Joe Ryan was the player the Red Sox viewed as the top potential prize ahead of Thursday’s MLB trade deadline. However, no deal came to fruition despite Boston’s rumored heavy last-minute pursuit of Ryan.
In the nearly two days since the Red Sox failed to land Ryan, a few reports have emerged on what the team offered to try and land him. One report from The Athletic‘s Ken Rosenthal suggested that Boston’s offer was nowhere near strong enough to land Ryan, calling the Red Sox’ efforts to land the righty “feeble at best.”
Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow doesn’t hold the same view that Rosenthal does over his team’s trade negotiations for Ryan.
“I would strongly disagree with that, yes,” Breslow said when asked if he agreed with Rosenthal’s assessment during an appearance on WEEI’s “The Greg Hill Show.”
Of course, Breslow’s stance shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. He told reporters on Thursday that the Red Sox were willing to get “uncomfortably aggressive” in the deals they were trying to make as they had a relatively quiet deadline, acquiring starting pitcher Dustin May and reliever Steve Matz.
As Rosenthal called the Red Sox’ efforts to land Ryan “feeble,” the team declined the Twins’ ask to include any of their big league outfielders, according to The Athletic‘s Jen McCaffrey. More specifically, Minnesota asked Boston for either Jarren Duran or Wilyer Abreu on top of the prospects it was offering, The Athletic‘s Dan Hayes reported.
In terms of the prospects the Red Sox offered, it appeared that they were willing to put their top non-big league young players on the table for Ryan. Boston’s offers for Ryan included multiple players viewed as top 100 prospects in baseball, such as pitcher Payton Tolle, outfielder Jhostynxon Garcia, and middle infielder Franklin Arias, WEEI’s Rob Bradford reported. Those players were also a part of trade offers for Marlins pitcher Sandy Alcantara, Bradford added.
Breslow iterated that he felt the Red Sox’ package of prospects for Ryan was strong enough.
“We really like our minor league players,” Breslow said when asked if he felt he might be overrating his own prospects in trade offers during his WEEI appearance. “Is it possible that we like them more than other teams? Sure. Probably because we acquired them, we have relationships with them.
“In order to add impact players, particularly impact starting pitching, we had to take the position that we’d be willing to talk about anybody in our system, and we were,” Breslow added. “But that doesn’t guarantee that you’re going to line up with another team in order to get a deal across the line.”
With Roman Anthony, Marcelo Mayer, and Kristian Campbell having graduated or being set to graduate as prospects, SoxProspects.com recently ranked Tolle as the No. 1 player in the Red Sox’ farm system. It ranks Arias at No. 2 in the system and Garcia at No. 5.
Of that group, Garcia is the closest to reaching the majors. But considering he’s an outfielder, there isn’t a pathway for him to get called up from Triple-A Worcester for the foreseeable future. Tolle, meanwhile, has been highly productive with Double-A Portland after getting called up recently, while Arias is in high-A ball.
That might be why the Red Sox reportedly viewed those three prospects as expendable in a deal for Ryan, but also why the Twins wanted a proven major leaguer added to the package.
“I do think that we have a number of conversations inside the office, in our deadline room, about what our goal is and what we’re trying to accomplish, and that’s to win the World Series,” Breslow said. “We have to be willing to get uncomfortable with trading some of our young players in order to do that, and I think the most important thing is that we were. It just didn’t work out this deadline.”
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