Boston Red Sox fans — and now fans around MLB — have learned about the club's incredibly confusing decision to trade outfield prospect James Tibbs III to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Not only did Boston only get Dustin May in return, who had pitched badly all season long and was months from free agency, but it tacked on another top outfield prospect, Zach Ehrhard, onto the Dodgers' return package. But Tibbs has been the biggest sticking point in this disaster of a trade for a few reasons.
First and foremost, Tibbs has been incredible for the Dodgers' Triple-A squad. The 23-year-old is slashing .356/.457/.864 with a 1.321 OPS and eight home runs in 15 games. Secondly, Tibbs was part of Boston's return in the Rafael Devers trade with the San Francisco Giants, for which it has almost nothing to show anymore — Kyle Harrison is showing out as a Milwaukee Brewer and Jordan Hicks has been terrible for the Chicago White Sox.
Strangely enough, new reporting suggests that the Red Sox never planned to hold onto Tibbs for long. According to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, Boston offered Tibbs to other teams in attempt to trade for a competitive balance pick before the 2025 MLB Draft (subscription required).
Ken Rosenthal reports Red Sox tried to trade James Tibbs III for draft picks before the trade deadline deal that sent him to Dodgers
Tibbs was only a member of the Red Sox organization for about six weeks, but his tenure would've been much shorter had another team taken Boston up on the trade offer. The Devers trade went through on June 15 and the 2025 Draft came less than a month later on July 13.
Rosenthal also reports that the Red Sox only traded for Hicks because the Giants refused to trade them two prospects, which Boston insisted upon, without also unloading Hicks' money. The left-handed reliever signed a four-year, $44 million contract with San Francisco before the 2024 season, and his contract has aged even more poorly than Devers' ever would.
Rosenthal's reporting makes the Devers trade look even more shortsighted than it did before. Not only would Boston's outfield have no room for Tibbs, — just look at its current outfield logjam — trading for a player it seemingly had no intention of keeping while also taking on a liability like Hicks is simply confounding.
The Red Sox made the trade for May out of utter desperation. Breslow attempted to trade for ace Joe Ryan from the Minnesota Twins, and when that deal fell through, he had to make a desperate decision with just minutes until the trade deadline.
Had Boston better allocated its resources at the trade deadline, maybe it would've been able to trade Tibbs for a better pitcher than Sonny Gray or Johan Oviedo this offseason, such as Freddy Peralta, or maybe it could've enticed the Twins into a deal for Ryan. Instead, Breslow's hastiness cost the Red Sox at the trade deadline and beyond. Even worse, he made the Dodgers look that much smarter, which nobody in the world needed.
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