As Red Sox clinch playoff spot, how ‘resilient’ Boston team survived ‘stressful’ week that changed it all | Chris Cotillo

Twenty-four hours after pulling off one of the most shocking trades in Red Sox history, Craig Breslow made a claim that was quite hard to believe. As he explained why the club traded superstar Rafael Devers to the Giants, he stuck his neck out with a prediction on what was to come.

“At the end of the season,” Breslow said, to a group of nearly 100 reporters circling like piranhas on a Zoom call on the night of June 16, “I think we could look back and say we’ve won more games than we otherwise would have because of the way that this roster is now able to come together.”

More than three months later, the Red Sox are postseason-bound, having gone 51-36 since the Devers trade, which came hours after the club climbed to a game above .500 with a June 15 win over the Yankees at Fenway Park. Boston clinched its postseason berth by beating the Tigers on a Ceddanne Rafaela walk-off triple on Friday night. The Red Sox will play meaningful baseball in October for the first time since 2021.

It’s impossible, of course, to know what Boston’s final record would have been had Devers remained on the roster. Preseason win total projections had them right around the range in which they’ll finish, a number somewhere between 87 and 90. Looking back, though, Breslow says he was confident making the claim, not because of some wake-up call caused by the Devers trade or the removal of a distraction in the clubhouse. The Red Sox truly believed their roster — which had added rookie Roman Anthony six days before trading Devers — would be more functional.

“I think that was just confidence and optimism in the players that were going to step up and the way the roster was going to come together, and the way Alex (Cora) was going to be able to use it to platoon, keep guys fresh and maybe run the bases a little bit more aggressively,” Breslow said last week. “That’s not to take anything away from the talent that is Raffy Devers. I just think we were trying to solve for winning the most games and thought it was the path to be able to do that.”

***

The week that changed the Red Sox’ season began with a homer barrage in the Bronx on June 8, in which Boston won its first series of the Yankees with five blasts in an 11-7 win. The club returned to Fenway for a key six-game homestand, hovering below .500 at 32-35. The Sox arrived in Boston, after a Sunday Night Baseball win in the Bronx, with just an 18.8% chance to reach the postseason, according to FanGraphs.

As players trickled into Fenway for a late report time, it became apparent to team decision-makers that right fielder Wilyer Abreu wasn’t 100%. He had tweaked his oblique three days earlier, and despite appearing as a pinch-hitter in the next two games, was feeling increasingly worse Monday afternoon. Breslow popped his head out of the home clubhouse at Fenway Park shortly after 3:45 p.m. ET with a sheepish, knowing grin. The club had decided it was time to promote Anthony,

Five minutes later, video surfaced from Worcester. Anthony and his dark gray BMW were on the way to Fenway Park and he’d be in the lineup that night against the Rays. Devers hit second and Anthony fifth. It was easy for Red Sox fans to dream on that offensive duo crushing opposing pitching for a decade to come.

Behind the scenes, though, with Devers’ feud with management growing so tense that principal owner John Henry had to fly to Kansas City for a private meeting with him less than 24 hours after the slugger aired out Breslow and went public with his displeasure over being asked to switch positions for a second time in three months, trade talks were underway. The Braves, Padres and Blue Jays all were involved. But by the weekend, the Giants had emerged as the most aggressive.

There were whispers as early as Friday, ahead of the series opener against the Yankees, that something big was happening behind the scenes. Cora, very uncharacteristically, canceled his weekly Friday night appearance on NESN’s pregame show. There were meetings he couldn’t miss. As the Red Sox won Friday, and again Saturday, the front office was hard at work orchestrating a move that would shake the baseball industry.

Yes, Breslow said, it was the most tense week of his year, though he joked that he reserves the right to change the answer come October.

“It was stressful,” he acknowledged. “I understood the implications of that and I knew that there was a chance this was going to go very differently.

“I knew it was a significant decision for the organization, and one that was going to set us on a particular path. That path was going to be one that didn’t have Raffy in it.”

By Sunday night, after the Sox beat the Yankees for the third straight game — a win in which Devers homered off New York ace Max Fried — it was decision time. As the club boarded a flight to Seattle to begin a long West Coast trip, everything seemed normal. Minutes went by and members of the traveling party started wondering why they weren’t yet in the air. Then, assistant general manager Paul Toboni came down the aisle, informed Devers a deal was in place and thanked him for his service with the Red Sox. As Devers walked off the plane, veteran leaders gathered near the rear of the aircraft, quietly hatching plans for how to move forward, well out of earshot of shellshocked teammates.

Some players understood trading Devers with the backdrop of the drama that had encircled the team since February. Others disagreed with the decision. It was inarguable, though, that, at least on paper, the Red Sox’ chances of meaningfully competing in 2025 had taken a hit.

“It’s definitely disheartening when you trade a guy like Rafael Devers,” said veteran reliever Liam Hendriks. “Nothing can make up for that, no matter what team you are. There’s no team that’s better without Rafael Devers in the lineup.”

In different circumstances, the Red Sox might have taken Devers across the country with them and then had him find his own way from Seattle to San Francisco. But a messy divorce culminated in an awkward ending that no one was satisfied with. Devers, now a Giant, took a taxi cab back to Fenway, where clubhouse attendants had pulled his Land Rover to the Jersey Street curb and had loaded it with the contents of his now-former locker.

It was somewhat fitting, then, that video of Devers pulling out of Fenway for the last time went viral, much like Anthony’s arrival a few days earlier.

As Devers headed west on his own, so did Breslow, who flew to Seattle the following day to attend a series he had been planning to watch from home. He figured players might have questions. He tried to prepare answers. He cared little that he had put his legacy on the line in similar fashion to how his predecessor, Chaim Bloom, had by trading Mookie Betts to the Dodgers five years earlier.

“If you start to think about the magnitude of the decision, it could potentially impede your ability to make what you think is the right decision or the best decision,” Breslow said, looking back. “That’s not to say that I should be flippant about making a decision of that magnitude. If you believe a decision is right, no matter how hard it is, no matter how much scrutiny it’s gonna face, you have to be able to make it.”

***

Anthony and Devers, long thought of franchise cornerstones for years to come, were in the Red Sox’ lineup together for just four games before the trade. Anthony moved into a prime locker in the home clubhouse, situated between Jarren Duran and Alex Bregman, across from where Devers had been for years. Jordan Hicks, the only big leaguer acquired in from the Giants, settled into Devers’ spot. A changing of the guard was underway.

“You go from the shock of trading a franchise icon into someone who, arguably, should have been here a lot earlier in Roman,” said Hendriks.

It was unrealistic to think Anthony, a 21-year-old who was just 1-for-17 as a big leaguer at the time Devers was dealt, would be able to replace Devers’ impact in the lineup. Breslow and his lieutenants knew that, no matter how much Anthony had shown them as a can’t-miss prospect in the minors. As of June 16, though, Anthony had something he didn’t while Devers was on the roster: a much larger opportunity.

“The way that we got there is that Willy was on the IL, Raffy was DHing. If you then fast-forward and think about how all those pieces would come together, it does just become a more difficult roster to navigate (for opposing teams),” Breslow said.

With Abreu expected back soon, the Red Sox were figuring out how Anthony, Abreu, Jarren Duran, Ceddanne Rafaela, Devers and, eventually, Masataka Yoshida, could co-exist on a roster that had three starting outfield spots and one DH spot. Sending Anthony down when Abreu returned appeared to be on the table. The Devers deal, while very much about the fact the team and player “couldn’t find alignment” in the final months of his tenure, was also about clearing the deck for Anthony.

The rookie was on the bench for the final two games the Sox played with Devers. He started the next 62 of 65, including 45 in the outfield, before straining his oblique on a swing in a September 2 game.

“What we had talked about was some flexibility in the roster, a little more functionality and the chance to move guys through different positions and free up some opportunities for some young players to emerge,” Breslow said. “We talked about this dynamic style of play we were looking to embrace.

“Nobody scripts out these things. You’re trying to react to the information you have in the moment at the time.”

From June 16 on, Anthony catalyzed the Red Sox’ offense, hitting .308 with eight homers, 17 doubles, 48 runs, 29 RBIs, a .412 on-base percentage and an .899 OPS. Across the country, Devers hit .253 with 15 homers, 12 doubles, 37 runs, 38 RBIs, a .358 on-base percentage and an .840 OPS in that 65-game span. It’s inarguable that Boston’s offense would have been better if the Sox had found a way to have both Anthony and Devers in it. But with that possibility gone, the Sox found a way to replace Devers’ production almost immediately with Anthony, even if those making the calls didn’t have expectations that the impact would come so soon.

“Roman is obviously a great player. He’s got really unique poise and maturity and self-assuredness,” Breslow said. “But I don’t think anybody would say, after watching someone play in the big leagues for five days, that they’ve got a full appreciation for what somebody is capable of.”

The Red Sox, after a strange, bumpy trip west that included a reunion with Devers and a 3-6 record, took off in July, winning 10 in a row before the All-Star break and going 17-7 in the month. The postseason came into focus.

“It was a very odd time to be around because of obvious reasons, but the guys at the time said, ‘We have a job to do.’ We can’t sit there and dwell on it,” Hendriks said. “It almost brought in that determination, a ‘We’re going to prove you wrong’ kind of thing. That one thing has definitely helped galvanize the clubhouse together.”

***

As Breslow and the Red Sox celebrate while soaked in champagne at Fenway on Friday night, they find themselves right about where preseason prognostications expected them to be, albeit in a much different way. It would have been hard to believe a team that got very little from expected key contributors like Tanner Houck, Triston Casas, Kutter Crawford and Masataka Yoshida, traded Devers and then played almost the entire the final month without rookies Anthony, Mayer or Kristian Campbell on the roster would sniff 90 wins. On the flip side, few would have expected Aroldis Chapman to be as dominant as he has been, Trevor Story to rebound in such a profound way, Carlos Narváez to emerge as one of the better all-around catchers in baseball or Brayan Bello and Lucas Giolito to spend the summer competing to be the true No. 2 behind ace Garrett Crochet.

The shape-shifting Red Sox, due to injuries, rookie promotions and yes, blockbuster trades, have been forced to change their identity countless times since they kicked off the season at Globe Life Field on March 27. A poor start didn’t sink them. Neither did Casas’ season-ending injury or the Devers trade. Not an underwhelming trade deadline, either, or Anthony’s injury, which will likely sideline him for at least the first couple weeks of the playoffs.

The plucky Red Sox are playoff-bound not because everything has gone right. In fact, they’ll be playing next week in large part because of how they responded to what went wrong.

“It’s interesting because I think it probably forces you to ask the question of, ‘What is the identity of a team?’” Breslow wondered aloud. “Is it the strength of the best player? Is it a personality? But what this team has been from Day 1 is resilient.

“When we’ve got some guys in the middle of the order that hit the ball out of the park, we’re going to be a power-driven team. When some of those guys are hurt and on the IL, we’ve got to figure out other ways to win games. Sometimes, it’s hitting the ball out of the park, sometimes it’s situational hitting, sometimes it’s baserunning, sometimes it’s hitting. Is that a feature or a bug?

“The players and the staff deserve a ton of credit for embracing the challenge that was in front of them and going out, playing well, winning a bunch of baseball games and putting us in a position in late September to be playing meaningful games.”