David Price suggests slumping Red Sox could trade stars in drastic fire sale
By Sean Penney
Dave Dombrowski has some experience with dismantling a championship roster but this team isn’t the 1998 Florida Marlins. That infamous fire sale was an owner-mandated liquidation of assets that preceded the sale of the team. The Marlins were never expected to contend the year after hoisting the first World Series trophy in franchise history.
The situation is different for a Red Sox team that expected make a run at becoming the first MLB team in nearly two decades to win back-to-back titles. Yet the end result could be the same, only with the fire sale coming at the trade deadline instead of before the season.
It seems unfathomable that a team that won 108 games would return essentially the same roster the following year and still end up as a potential seller at the trade deadline. Except we don’t need to look too far back in franchise history to find a similar comparison. The Red Sox won the 2013 World Series before taking this same first-to-worst nosedive the following season. Boston traded Jon Lester to the Oakland A’s at the deadline rather than risk losing him for nothing when he hit free agency that winter.
The Red Sox will find themselves at the same crossroads this summer if they don’t start living up to their potential.