The Sox at the All-Star Break: Too Darn Hot
The Sox head into the break on a 10-game winning streak, plus we revisit the Devers' trade a month later.
On June 15th, the Red Sox traded Rafael Devers and as you might remember, I did not react well. I’m still not acting well about it, but a month has past and with perhaps a bit of perspective, now seems like a good time to talk about our feelings. (Not something I’ve ever Notebooked before, as far as you know.) Plus, with the All-Star break upon us, what else do we have to do this week?
This isn’t going to be some mega mea culpa where because the Red Sox have beaten the dregs of the National League by football scores for a week and Rafael Devers has looked like Pedro Cerrano vs a curveball so far, I’m not going to come on here and claim to have seen the light of the Craig “Buy Low” Breslow way. (I stumbled into it, but that’s a pretty good nickname for a General Manager or President of Baseball Operations, no?)
This past week and a half has been the most joyous of the season, well since that week we won 7 of 9 vs the Yankees and Rays (5-1 vs the Yankees) and then traded Raffy Devers. I felt so good after last Thursday night’s comeback win vs the Rays that 3 hours later I started bracing myself for the “the Red Sox have traded Jarren Duran to San Diego” tweets. While bracing for the other shoe to drop over the weekend vs the Rays a curious thing happened, or didn’t happen. The Red Sox, they who in 2025 have given us mere glimpses of happiness only to chase it with almost unbearable agony, just kept on running like they were Forrest Gump.
If sweeping the Yankees in June was fun, then this weekend at Fenway was like getting a Daisy Red Ryder for Christmas; just complete and utter euphoria.
I don’t care that this 10-game winning streak started when we were playing the NL on “Rookie Mode” or that the Rockies couldn’t make the Zone 2 Legion Tournament against the 2004 field, or that the Washington Nationals were actively quitting on their manager, general manager, office manager and assistant to the regional manager while the Sox were blasting dingers and Roman (Romy) candles in our Nation’s Capital. July has been a really fun month to be a Red Sox fan. Bregman has come back, heck, Masataka Yoshida could’ve been an All-Star if he didn’t make his debut after the rosters were announced. Ceddanne Rafaela has become a cross between Jackie Bradley Jr and Jimmie Foxx. Romy Gonzalez is hitting balls to places at Fenway Park that haven’t been swept since the ’99 Home Run Derby. Roman Anthony won’t quit rocketing balls to left field, (they’ve asked him and he just flat out refuses to stop doing it). Carlos Narvaez should be the AL Rookie of the Year. Duran got his power back and if he had made the All-Star team again, probably would go MVP back to back, but nice of him to give someone else a chance, right?
The pitching has been great, Crochet is a bona fide Hoss, his performance on Saturday against the Rays gave me goose bumps. As hot as this team is, you almost don’t want a break at all, but for a guy who is soon to reach innings levels he’s never seen before, I want Crochet to get some rest. He had an extra day last week and he used it to sharpen his repertoire and harpoon the Rays with it for complete game shutty.
Giolito has been an outstanding #2 and one of the best pitchers in the American League since Memorial Day. And for a second I thought I dreamt it, but Bryan Bello had a complete game the other night? He’s been great since his bout of 4.2 innings per time out, now he’s not only qualifying for wins, he’s earning them!
From the Red Sox side, it’s all champagne and Sea Dog Biscuits (not a sponsor) they have dug down and pulled themselves up by the bootstraps to get back into relevancy. Playing as exciting a brand of baseball as we have seen since October of 2021.
Rafael Devers on the other hand, might leave his heart in San Francisco, but he left his game in Boston. Since joining the Giants, Devers is batting .214 with just 2 home runs and 10 RBI. In 104 plate appearances he has just 18 hits, 17 walks and 32 strike outs. But hey, remember how bad he was the first 15 games of this season in Boston? He takes some time to warm up, I’m sure he’ll hit his stride and probably go on a tear in the second half.
The return we got from San Francisco has been about what we expected. Jordan Hicks is the only one of the 4 that has seen big league action and he’s been………fine? They even put him into a 9th inning situation against Washington and I don’t think he instilled a lot of confidence in anybody that he could wrest the closer’s role from Aroldis Chapman. He’s what he has been his entire career; he’s a middle reliever who can throw hard. Never a bad thing to have around, but the biggest problem in Hicks’ career is that people have always wanted more. Teams have wanted him to be a closer and a starter and it has created, not unrealistic expectations, but the fluctuation in his roles has always led to problems. Sort of like when we took Daniel Bard from elite set up man and instead of making him closer, we had him starting games. Hicks is a hard thrower out of the bullpen, give him high leverage spots in the 6th, 7th and 8th innings until he shows that he can’t do it. But he isn’t your closer for the future.
The other pieces: you can see James Tibbs III in Portland with the Sea Dogs, (he homered in their Scooby-Doo uniforms last week). Pitcher Kyle Harrison, viewed as the biggest piece the Sox got in the trade (3rd round pick in the 2020 Draft) is “reworking his pitch arsenal.” Right now I would settle for “painting his tool shed” because through 3 games with Worcester he is 1-2, with a 7.62 ERA, and has given up 20 hits and 11 earned runs in just 13 innings of work. So he might be looking for his pitches longer than we were looking for Yoshida. Perhaps Steven Wright can teach him the knuckleball?
So after a month, the fight is probably a draw and sadly if you were to compare the Devers trade to a boxing match, it would probably most closely resemble Mike Tyson vs Jake Paul. But the Red Sox are playing outstanding baseball, yes they got six wins against the pre-Kelly Leak Bad News Bears, but what they derived from those games is a very real confidence that they carried over into the four-game sweep of the Rays. Winning 3 straight one-run games against a division rival and coming back from a deficit after the 7th inning, not once but twice is something that this team hasn’t been able to do since Kyle from Waltham was playing first base.
Previously I wanted them to trade everyone (or at least Chapman, Bregman and an outfielder) now I’m more optimistic. We’re 8 games over .500, maybe we take a chance and buy at the deadline and try to get a Wild Card spot. Then I’m reminded that we were 10 games over .500 at the All-Star break last year and our “buying” was Danny Jansen, James Paxton, Quinn Priester, Lucas Sims and Luis Garcia. We focus on labels like buyers and sellers, we mustn’t forget that you need to buy the right players. This team is on a heater, adding a back up catcher shouldn’t be the first move we make this month.
Regardless of what you label them, the Red Sox will be active in the trade market this month. They have too many outfielders, too many guys in general but still have holes that are keeping them from being a title contender in October. They have moves to make. They could make small moves (see: any of the 2024 moves) big moves (trading a corner outfielder) or they could create giant waves by dealing Jarren Duran.
When the Red Sox traded Devers, what bothered me the most was that it felt like they were punting on this season, next and maybe the one after it. Against my clouded judgement, they’ve continued to stay in the conversation, and date I say it, thrive. Which really, is what we want. We want the team to win ball games and be interesting. There have been very few dull moments this season, and July might be the fascinating month yet. If this past weekend is any indication, rest up this week, because when games resume on Friday, we enter the gauntlet of the second half and toting this 10-game winning streak, we aren’t sneaking up on anybody.
In the mean time, let’s bask in the glow of our longest winning streak since 2018. A month ago, our ecstasy over sweeping the Yankees only lasted 3 hours before we traded Rafael Devers. This month, we can savor this 10-game winning streak for 5 more days. Then we try to make it 11.