Boston Red Sox fans had high expectations for the 2025 trade deadline, as they were led to believe they should.
After the Rafael Devers trade and before the 10-game winning streak that sent the Red Sox into the All-Star break riding high, Boston's front office planned to buy at the deadline. The Devers trade was supposed to make the Red Sox more financially flexible, and there was more than enough pitching and first base talent to choose from.
But as the Red Sox's targets began to fly off the board, such as Eugenio Suárez, Ryan O'Hearn and Merrill Kelly, it felt more and more like the big trade they needed to remain competitive would never come. It never did, and Boston added just Steven Matz and Dustin May before 6 p.m. on Thursday.
The rotation and bullpen did get deeper, but not deep enough to rival the Blue Jays and Yankees' additions. Boston also didn't improve offensively or defensively at all — Connor Wong is still its backup catcher, and Romy Gonzalez and Abraham Toro will still platoon at first base.
Craig Breslow's trade deadline excuses don't explain Red Sox's lack of action
Despite their underwhelming additions, chief baseball officer Craig Breslow attested after the deadline that he felt the Red Sox got "uncomfortably aggressive." The aggressiveness included an overpay for two months of May, and zero players traded from the active roster.
"We weren’t willing to take hit to our major league team and potentially impact the 2025 season in favor of trying to re-package or re-purpose in a way that might have improved the future," Breslow said (via Chris Cotillo of MassLive.) "There weren’t really opportunities to both trade off our major league team and improve our 2025 outlook so we felt it was best to leave that group as it was and try to use what I think is a strong and deep system to try to improve the team."
Breslow says Red Sox feel they were "uncomfortably aggressive."
— Chris Cotillo (@ChrisCotillo) July 31, 2025
"Other teams needed to say, 'Hey, that's enough.'"
Breslow's excuses make little sense, especially since Boston was perfectly comfortable trading Devers from its major league roster when it was hardly in the playoff conversation. If the Red Sox were uncomfortable trading from their big league roster, there are a few players on the 40-man with no path to the majors they could've dealt. Yet, inexplicably, Vaughn Grissom, Nick Sogard and Nate Eaton remain. They also didn't use their "strong and deep system" to outbid the Rangers for Merrill Kelly, the best rental pitcher on the market.
If the Red Sox were really as aggressive as Breslow claims, they would have improved more than they did. Other teams around the league made plenty of deals — the Twins sold almost their entire roster, the Padres burned through their already depleted farm system, and the Yankees and Blue Jays left Boston in the dust.
The American League is as weak and balanced as it's been in years. With the right additions, the Red Sox had as good a chance as any other buying team to make a deep playoff run. Instead, they maintained their outfield logjam, got deeper but not better, and retained multiple players who have no long-term future with the team.