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What Craig Breslow said about ‘frustration and disappointment’ following Red Sox’s quiet trade deadline
"We didn’t approach some of these conversations as though any players were off-limits. We couldn’t line up."
The Boston Red Sox improved their roster ahead of Thursday’s trade deadline — acquiring a lefty reliever Steven Matz from the Cardinals and a right-handed starter in Dustin May from the Dodgers.
But, given the dearth of a runaway contender in a wide-open American League this season, Boston’s inability to add a legitimate game-changing talent on Thursday still stands as a missed opportunity by Craig Breslow and his staff.
Speaking on Thursday an hour after MLB’s trade deadline passed, Boston’s chief baseball officer acknowledged the frustration doled by fans amid the Red Sox’s inability to reel in a big fish to help with this current playoff push.
“I understand the frustration and the disappointment because we’re all looking at the last week right now in terms of the trades that were made and weren’t made,” Breslow said. “And there’s not a lot of sympathy for how hard we tried to get deals across the line, I understand that. “We believe that we have a really young, exciting, talented team, and one that is capable of continuing to perform at this level and make it to the postseason, and that’s what our focus is on.
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“And there’s decisions that were made at this deadline, they weren’t driven by an unwillingness to be aggressive. They weren’t driven by taking a highlighted or reinforced view of 2026 or 2027. We were aggressively pursuing acquisitions that could help us in 2025. They didn’t line up.”
The Red Sox have several assets at their disposal to upgrade their roster before Thursday’s deadline, be it big-league contributors like Jarren Duran or a pool of blue-chip prospects in Boston’s still bountiful farm system.
Even if expected franchise stalwarts like Roman Anthony were deemed off-limits in trade requests this week, Boston could have still subtracted a top prospect like Franklin Arias or even Kristian Campbell to add an impact big-leaguer with years of team control, like Twins righty Joe Ryan.
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But even with Boston being linked again to Ryan in the final minutes of the trade deadline, no deal was struck beyond the Red Sox’s acquisitions of Matz and May.
For Breslow, Boston’s inability to add a top-of-the-rotation starter or an impact bat was not a result of some hesitancy on the Red Sox’s part to dangle trade chips out on the market.
“We pursued a number of really impact opportunities,” Breslow said. “Obviously, not all of them work out. It wasn’t from a lack of trying to be as aggressive as possible or from an unwillingness to get uncomfortable. Ultimately, it takes two teams lining up for those trades to line up.
“We’re happy with the guys we brought in, with Steven and Dustin, but we also pursued real impact players that we felt like could improve our team in ‘25 and beyond. We were uncomfortably aggressive in trying to pursue them in the players we were trying to put into deals. Ultimately, it wasn’t from a lack of effort. Other teams needed to say, ‘Hey, that’s enough. That crosses the line.’ It wasn’t about an unwillingness to talk about our full system.”
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Even though Breslow said that the Red Sox weren’t deeming their prospects as untouchable if a deal was to be made, he acknowledged that the team was hesitant over moving assets on the big-league roster — with Duran and Wilyer Abreu tabbed as two viable trade candidates in the weeks leading up to the trade deadline.
“We weren’t willing to take hit to our major league team and potentially impact the 2025 season in favor of trying to re-package or re-purpose in a way that might have improved the future,“ Breslow said. ”There weren’t really opportunities to both trade off our major league team and improve our 2025 outlook so we felt it was best to leave that group as it was and try to use what I think is a strong and deep system to try to improve the team.”
Boston still remains in the playoff picture as of Thursday night with a 59-51 record — good for second in the AL Wild Card race.
But, after failing to reel off a blockbuster trade for the fourth deadline in a row, the onus is going to have to fall on the players still in Boston’s clubhouse to get the team to the finish line in August and September.
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“We didn’t approach some of these conversations as though any players were off-limits. We couldn’t line up,” Breslow said. “We were pursuing multiple impact players. On the other side, teams that were operating as sellers were trying to juggle different concepts. For whatever reason, we weren’t able to line up.
“The team has been playing well, in a position where the playoffs are pretty firmly in view. Felt like we needed to do what we could to try and bolster the team. I think I’ve been pretty outspoken about that. We pursued as much as we possibly could.”
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