The Boston Red Sox are one of many teams scoping out the catching market before the August 3 trade deadline. Unfortunately for all the contenders looking for catching help, many of the favorite candidates around the league aren't available.
Athletics backstop Shea Langeliers fell injured and underwent season-ending surgery. The Minnesota Twins will buy ahead of the deadline, meaning they're more than likely to hold onto Ryan Jeffers. The Colorado Rockies have released a list of their available players and two-time All-Star Hunter Goodman is not on it.
MLB insider Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reports that the Red Sox and Rockies discussed a Goodman trade and there's an obvious reason why it never came to fruition. Colorado has been asking after packages led by teams' No. 1 prospects — in the Sox's case, that would be Franklin Arias (subscription required).
But Arias plus other players is an insane ask for a player like Goodman. Granted, the Rockies have no reason to move him, as he's one of their best players and has three years of control remaining on his contract following this season, but requesting Arias is unserious.
Rockies asked Red Sox for top prospect Franklin Arias to start trade package for Hunter Goodman
Arias is the No. 7 prospect in baseball (according to MLB Pipeline) and may end up ranked even higher after this season. The 20-year-old shortstop is slashing .307/.393/.570 with 17 doubles, a triple and 20 home runs over 79 games between Double-A and Triple-A. His 20 home runs more than double his career high of nine from 2024, when he began his season in the Florida Complex League. Arias also plays excellent defense. He's made just three errors and turned 26 double plays over 474.2 innings at shortstop with the Sea Dogs this season.
There are many things Goodman does well that would undoubtedly help the Red Sox for the next few years. He's slashing .254/.326/.545 with 31 home runs over 100 games. He would immediately become the home run leader in Boston and his pull side power would play perfectly at Fenway Park.
But Goodman strikes out quite a bit — more than the Red Sox need. He carries a career-high 33.3 strikeout percentage this season and a 29.2 percent mark for his career. He's also just an average defender and Carlos Narváez is better than him in all but one metric (pop time) tracked by Baseball Savant.
Goodman would be a nearly perfect addition to the Sox's offense, but for the right price. The Rockies have essentially made him unavailable by asking for top prospects as a starting point, and while that's a clever plan because some utterly desperate club may bite, Boston should not be that club. Arias has all the skills he needs to stick at shortstop in the major leagues for a long time and it's unreasonable to ask that he be the start of a trade package for Goodman, which shows that the Rockies aren't serious about trading him.
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