On Sunday night, mere hours after he hit his 15th home run of the season to help propel the Boston Red Sox to a series sweep over the Yankees, the team traded Rafael Devers to the SF Giants. The deal was astounding, enraging, and frankly unbelievable in the first few minutes after it was reported by FanSided insider Robert Murray.
Details of the trade followed in a torrent. Boston received pitchers Jordan Hicks (6.00+ ERA) and Kyle Harrison (5.00+ ERA), 2024 first-round draft pick James Tibbs III, and minor league pitcher Jose Bello in return, and they have already officially announced they'll be optioning Harrison to Triple-A.
They also reportedly pulled Devers off the team plane — they were on their way to Seattle — as they informed him of the trade.
The Red Sox have completely mismanaged this entire situation, starting the moment they signed Alex Bregman to a deal that he could still opt out of at the end of the season. They've broken fans' trust and grossly disrespected a player who was extended on the largest contract in franchise history to be the face of the organization.
Beyond the immediately obvious detriments, the trade could have irreversibly affected Boston's status as a destination for free agents. They already did this with Mookie Betts, and that was unforgivable. Doing it two times in the span of five years is evil.
Red Sox disrespecting Rafael Devers with franchise-shaking trade could impact their ability to sign free agents
The Red Sox are one of baseball's marquee teams, capable of swaying free agents to sign with them simply because they're the Red Sox. Despite Boston offering a higher AAV than any of their competitors, Bregman took a far less stable deal because he wanted to be a Red Sox; his documented admiration for the team is proof of that.
Who would want to entrust their career to a franchise that has so blatantly and carelessly tossed aside a player who was meant to lead them for the next decade? Devers was pulled off of the team plane and returned to Fenway via cab. If their trade return from San Francisco is anything to go off of, the Red Sox were all too happy to cast aside the last remaining member of their 2018 World Series team for the sake of saving money.
The Devers trade has deeply and perhaps permanently altered fans' relationship to the team, so it stands to reason that future free agents might also take this into account and think twice about going to an organization that's capable of such thoughtlessness. And Red Sox fans might not even be able to blame them.