The Boston Red Sox have been playing their best baseball of 2024 after beating the Miami Marlins on Thursday to put them eight games above .500 for the first time this season.
With less than a month to go until the MLB trade deadline, no one knows which way the Red Sox will lean despite the recent hot stretch.
While manager Alex Cora and chief baseball officer Craig Breslow have both commented on the deadline, the national media have been on both sides of the debate.
This week, ESPN's Jeff Passan joined the "Section 10 Podcast" with co-hosts Jared Carrabis, Steve Perrault, Coley Mick and Tyler Milliken. During Passan's appearance, he shared his opinion on what Boston will do at the end of the month.
"If you just look at the way that they've acted in the short time, and I know there's not a giant sample of the Breslow regime, they have been very careful, and they have been very meticulous, and they have not gone out and said we're going to do something bold," Passan said. "If you look at who he spent time with in the Chicago Cubs organization, it was Jed Hoyer. Jed Hoyer, in terms of trade deadlines, tends to be extremely careful. In less it's a situation where they felt like they had a really good chance to win the World Series, as they did back in 2016 and they went out and got Aroldis Chapman... I don't know if there's anything that can take the Red Sox's World Series winning odds from the immediately low number that they're at right now to something that would warrant going out and making a big splash.
"Just understanding where Craig Breslow learned what being a front office executive is like, as well as the state of the Sox in terms of where they are in their window, which is frankly the beginning, now tends not to be when you make that kind of splash... I don't think for what's probably going to be a wild-card spot, they're gonna go very crazy right now. I think they're gonna save it for the years ahead when they see this group of kids coming up and complimenting what they've got right now and say 'You know what? Let's go wild when we have a chance to win some rings.'"
While everyone has thrown out different players that the Red Sox should/will target before the late July deadline, Passan probably has the most realistic take.
Boston's ownership and front office likely see their performance this year as a win for them because they have an exciting product and haven't had to spend much.
So, even though they could add more and make this a team that could compete for the top wild-card spot or maybe even the division, they'll treat Triston Casas' return from injury as their deadline acquisition and try to sell that to the fan base.
