The Boston Red Sox's return to October baseball was shorter than the club and its fans hoped. The Red Sox's offense couldn't produce enough to beat their rival New York Yankees in three games.
The Yankees didn't show it well in the Wild Card series, but they were the best slugging team in the regular season with a .455 team slugging percentage and a league-leading 274 homers, 30 more than the second place team hit. Anthony Volpe and Ben Rice were the only two Yankees to homer in the Wild Card series, but they're capable of much more damage. In his end-of-season press conference, Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow acknowledged that the teams that remained in the playoffs after their elimination could slug at a higher clip than them.
If only the Red Sox had a lefty slugger who can handle velocity in their lineup. It'd be even better if he was known for crushing the Yankees, in particular.
Also at the end-of-season presser, a reporter asked Breslow what he learned from his second year as CBO and from his experience with the Rafael Devers trade. His answer is upsetting given Boston's recent playoff elimination.
"I learned a lot about the value of building relationships and having clear communication and spending time with the coaching staff and spending time with the players and certainly with Alex [Cora] and having honest conversations, uncomfortable as they may be at times," Breslow said.
Craig Breslow's lesson from the Rafael Devers trade came too late to help Red Sox in 2025
The lead-up to the Devers trade is well established, and there's blame to be shared by both parties, being Devers and Red Sox management. Regardless of the causes and potential clubhouse drama surrounding the Devers trade, Boston had a gap in its lineup without him on the team, which was larely covered by Roman Anthony's call-up. Without Anthony, it would be hard to argue that the Red Sox were a better team without Devers, as Breslow claimed they could be in the press conference following the shocking trade.
Devers was on the way to the best offensive season of his career before Boston shipped him to San Francisco. He slashed .272/.401/.504 with a .905 OPS, 18 doubles, 15 homers, 76 strikeouts and 56 walks over 73 games with the Red Sox. His production starkly decreased in his 90 games with the Giants (.236/.347/.460), which easily could've been caused by the sudden uprooting of his life, or it could've been a vicious slump that would've affected him had he stayed with the Red Sox.
Yankees fans were thrilled after the Devers trade, and Breslow gave them the ultimate gift by trading away their No. 1 killer since David Ortiz, arguably the clutchest hitter in the history of the franchise. The past is the past and Devers is long gone, but the Devers-shaped hole that New York exposed in the Red Sox's lineup can't be ignored.
Breslow showed that he and Red Sox management at least know what they did wrong before they broke a 10-year commitment to a potential franchise player. Again, Devers isn't free from blame here, but the Red Sox clearly needed him more than he needed them, and it showed in their slugging struggles.