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Sam Kennedy not making any ‘promises’ with Red Sox’ plans at trade deadline
"Hopefully we can keep attacking here and make it kind of an easy decision.”
The Red Sox might be one of the hottest teams in baseball, but their summer resurgence hasn’t guaranteed that their top brass will buy ahead of the July 30 trade deadline.
Craig Breslow shared a sentiment on Tuesday about still deciding which “lane” to pick between buying and selling for a 2024 roster that has exceeded plenty of expectations already.
On Thursday, Red Sox team president and CEO Sam Kennedy kept his cards close to his chest when asked about any declarative statements regarding Boston’s plans to swing big for an impact player in the coming weeks.
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“You never want to make any sort of public promises or bold declarative statements around specifics,” Kennedy said during his weekly appearance on WEEI’s “The Greg Hill Show.” “Because what I’ve seen in baseball going back to the early 1990s is the trade deadline is a wacky sort of crazy time with a lot of frenetic activity. … “We’ve got to keep winning series.
“[We’ve] got a big one tonight, we’ve got the [Kansas City] Royals coming in, Dodgers, Rockies, Yankees before we get to the deadline. Hopefully we can keep attacking here and make it kind of an easy decision.”
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The Red Sox suffered a setback following Wednesday’s loss to Oakland, with FanGraphs currently tabbing Boston with a 44.0 percent chance of making the playoffs this fall. Still, the Red Sox currently sit nine games above .500, and have only lost three more games than the slumping Yankees.
As of Thursday evening, the Red Sox hold a 0.5-game lead over the Royals for the third and final wild-card spot in the American League.
Red Sox manager Alex Cora and several of his players have stressed the need for Boston to supplement and reward this young roster with more talent after significantly accelerating the franchise’s contention window.
“We’ll see what happens in a month or month and a half. We just need to keep playing better baseball,” manager Alex Cora told reporters in late June. “I know we’ve been talking about the Wild Card and all that stuff. Let’s get greedy.”
Cora added on Wednesday during an interview on WEEI that he’s had promising conversations with Breslow and Boston’s top brass over the last few weeks.
“I had a conversation with Craig three days ago, this whole thing with ownership and front office that they want to lose so we can trade people to improve the future of the organization, I think it’s wrong,” Cora told WEEI. “We just gotta be patient. We put ourselves in a great position. Ten games over .500 is important. We talked about it two weeks ago: win this series. Win the next one. Look around the league. We’ve been one of the best teams in the big leagues the last month and a half. “
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“Alex said it really well yesterday, as he typically does: You’re never going to hear a manager or a coaching staff or players talk about trading players away or selling at the deadline,” Kennedy added of Cora’s comments. “There’s a very distinct belief in these guys that are in these positions that we can do something special.”
While the Red Sox are currently in a playoff spot, management’s murky comments about buying at the deadline — coupled with a relatively inactive offseason — has cast some doubt on just how active Boston plans to be before July 30.
At one point, Kennedy was asked if the Red Sox planned on going “full throttle” at the deadline, a reference to Tom Werner’s infamous comments before Boston’s quiet offseason.
“Any other questions, guys,” Kennedy responded.
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