Rafael Devers Trade To Giants Puts Pressure On Phillies
Red Sox dealt Rafael Devers to the Giants after position change dispute (Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty ... More Images)
It doesn't seem like the Boston Red Sox trading disgruntled star Rafael Devers to the San Francisco Giants should impact the Phillies, but it does — big time.
On Sunday night, the Red Sox and Giants announced a shocker of a deal that ships Devers to the West Coast in exchange for two Major League pitchers, Kyle Harrison and Jordan Hicks, and two minor leaguers.
In one move, the Giants massively boosted their weakest unit — their offense. Devers, who's slashing .272/.401/.504, socked his 15th home run of the season Sunday; that's one more homer than San Francisco's left-handed hitters have hit this year. As CBS Sports baseball pundit Mike Axisa notes about the deal, 'We needn't overthink this. The team that gets the star almost always wins the trade, and the Giants just acquired one of the best hitters in the sport.'
That brings us to the Phillies, and the pressure the Devers deal dumps onto Philly. Yes, the Phils are battling the Mets (and maybe the Braves) for the NL East crown but they also currently sit in the top Wild Card slot, just 1½ games in from of San Francisco in the WC standings. So, it's feasible that the Phillies will be in a playoff race with the Giants as much as the Mets come September.
Enter the burning question: Does the Giants beefing up their offense compel the Phils to do the same? Well, it should. Especially after the Phillies missed out on to trading for Devers, who could have filled the power void left by Bryce Harper who recovers from a nagging wrist injury. (Sorry, Otto Kemp is not the answer.)
In fact, speculation arose that the Phils would target Devers once the All-Star third baseman and Boston management began feuding over a position switch earlier this spring. Getting Devers could have sent third baseman Alec Bohm to first base and Harper back to the outfield. But that idea is dead, so why dwell on it?
Philly should look for a bopper elsewhere to help their lagging offense, which ranks fifteenth in home runs with 75 and tenth in slugging at .404. Even with a healthy Harper, the team's offensive output is nothing scary.
It's likely Phillies president of baseball operation Dave Dombrowski is hunting for an offensive upgrade, probably not of Devers' caliber, however. And it's also likely that Dombrowski is targeting the weak-hitting outfield to improve. Entering the weekend, Phillies outfielders — primarily Nick Castellanos in right, a platoon of Brandon Marsh and Johan Rojas in center and Max Kepler in left — ranked 20th in slugging (.371) and tied for 21st in OPS (.681). They combined for 0.3 WAR, according to FanGraphs, fewer than only the Pirates, White Sox, Guardians, Rockies, and Royals.
At the moment, the Phillies aren't linked to a specific player but in the past they have been connected to the White Sox's Luis Robert and the Orioles' Cedric Mullins. Robert should drop off the Phils' wish-list amid a miserable season but Mullins (11 HRs, eight SBs) would be an improvement over the Marsh-Rojas platoon in center.
Here's where Devers going to S.F. really throws pressure on the Phillies: He's another left-handed monster (along with Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman and Juan Soto) that the Phils would need to neutralize amid a deep playoff run. So that would require the them trading for a left-handed reliever. The team's biggest lefty weapon, Jose Alvarado, is currently serving an 80-game PED suspension and out for the postseason.
Other Phillies' lefties, Matt Strahm and Tanner Banks, probably don't have the bullets to face Devers, Ohtani, Freeman and Soto in a high-leverage playoff moment. Strahm's fastball has lost some zip, down more than a mile since 2024, and Banks is built for a middle-relief role.
So is there an available late-inning lefty that the Phillies could get? Aroldis Chapman could hit the trading block if Boston goes into sell mode. The top-shelf relievers presumed to be available are all right-handed: Tampa Bay's Pete Fairbanks, Baltimore's Félix Bautista, Angels' Kenley Jansen and Washington's Kyle Finnegan. And the Phillies could use any one of them.
So back to the question: Who's the available lefty? Maybe he's on the roster already. Maybe it's starter Jesus Luzardo who could be converted into a reliever for the postseason and whose 98-mph fastball would play up big against those left-handed-hitting monsters like Devers.
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A look at other recent Red Sox trades involving franchise players, and if they have relevance to dealing Rafael Devers
July 31, 2004: Red Sox trade Nomar Garciaparra to the Cubs in a four-team deal that nets shortstop Orlando Cabrera and first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz. Garciaparra's relationship with the Red Sox had soured in his final year of a long-term deal, at a time when he and the team had failed to find common ground on an extension and while he struggled to work his way back from injury. Advertisement In subsequent years, then-manager Terry Francona suggested Garciaparra had become 'Bostoned out,' leaving the Sox open to dealing an iconic player. The Sox' catastrophically bad defense, meanwhile, also left them eager to upgrade the infield. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The result was a landmark deal to reshape the Sox on the field and in the clubhouse, Garciaparra for Cabrera and Mientkiewicz — two players who were on the field when the Sox captured their first title in 86 years that October. Doug Mientkiewicz (left) celebrated with teammates when the Red Sox ended their World Series championship drought in 2004. Bohn, John Globe Staff Relevance to Devers trade: Certainly, there are similarities in the sense that a career-long Red Sox icon saw his relationship with the organization turn. But the trade was structured around the immediate contributions of 2004, rather than around long-term value. The Sox dealt 8½ years of Devers for several years of control of Kyle Harrison, Jordan Hicks, James Tibbs, and Jose Bello. Related : Advertisement July 31, 2008: Red Sox trade Manny Ramirez to the Dodgers as part of a three-team deal that nets outfielder Jason Bay. With his contract status unresolved beyond 2008, Ramirez — in the final season of a landmark eight-year, $160 million deal, and unhappy that the Sox hadn't offered clarity about the status of his team options beyond that season — created a number of clubhouse headaches that precipitated a decision to trade him, bringing back Pirates All-Star outfielder Bay as his replacement. (The Sox paid all of Ramirez's salary for the remainder of the year to facilitate the deal.) While Ramirez was otherworldly for the Dodgers down the stretch that year, Bay was excellent for the Sox, and helped them reach the 2008 ALCS. Relevance to Devers trade: Again, because Ramirez was on the cusp of free agency, the parallels are limited. In some ways, the fact that the Sox repeatedly explored and then backed away from trading Ramirez in earlier years of his deal distinguishes the two cases. Manny Ramirez was in the final season of a landmark eight-year, $160 million deal with the Red Sox when he was traded to the Dodgers in 2008. Davis, Jim Globe Staff Aug. 25, 2012: Red Sox trade Adrián González, Carl Crawford, Josh Beckett, and Nick Punto to the Dodgers for a five-player package led by pitching prospects Rubby De La Rosa and Allen Webster. The Red Sox organization was on edge throughout the 2012 season, the product of a late-season collapse in 2011, the departures of Francona and Theo Epstein, offseason revelations of clubhouse dysfunction, the hiring of Bobby Valentine as a manager, and spring training accusations of player backstabbing. Against that backdrop, the Sox seemed locked into their roster for the long haul given a number of sizable long-term contracts — and the clubhouse atmosphere was concerning, not only because of Valentine but also the negativity of veterans such as Beckett (two-plus years left on his contract) and Gonzalez (six-plus years left on his deal). Related : Advertisement And so, the Sox jumped on the Dodgers ex machina trade — driven mostly by a desire for salary relief, but also to reconfigure the clubhouse culture while acquiring promising young arms. Though neither Webster nor De La Rosa ended up contributing meaningfully, the Sox used the freed salary to overhaul their roster and clubhouse in a way that laid the groundwork for a championship season in 2013. Adrian Gonzalez had six-plus years left on his deal with the Red Sox dealt him to the Dodgers in 2012. John Tlumacki Relevance to Devers trade: In some ways, this might be the closest comparison, given that the Sox were moving a player expected to offer a long-term, middle-of-the-order anchor in González for payroll flexibility and young, unproven talent. It's worth noting that the trade-induced salary relief paid enormous dividends for 2013, when the Red Sox rolled a series of sevens in their offseason signings, but the lineup collapsed in 2014. Feb. 10, 2020: Red Sox trade Mookie Betts and David Price to the Dodgers for Alex Verdugo, Jeter Downs, and Connor Wong. The Red Sox concluded during negotiations in the spring of 2019 that they'd be unable to sign a long-term deal with Betts, and so one year (and one head of baseball operations) removed from those talks, they dealt Betts and Price to Los Angeles (with the Dodgers absorbing half of Price's remaining contract) for an everyday outfielder in Verdugo and two prospects. The Dodgers signed Betts to a heavily deferred 12-year, $365 million extension and won the World Series in 2020, then won again with Betts as a centerpiece in 2024. Advertisement The Sox finished last in 2020 (positioning them to draft Marcelo Mayer with the No. 4 overall pick), bounced back with a surprise run to the ALCS — fueled at least partly by players added with the financial flexibility they'd gotten from the Betts trade — then wallowed in 78-81-win mediocrity for the next three years. The Dodgers absorbed half of David Price's remaining contract to complete the Mookie Betts trade with the Red Sox in 2020. Jim Davis/Globe Staff/The Boston Globe Relevance to Devers trade: Dealing Betts was driven solely by money (and in particular Price's money) — as well as by awareness of the superstar's fast-approaching free agency — rather than by clubhouse concerns, and the Sox had tried to find a path to keeping Betts and trading Price while resetting their payroll earlier in the offseason. So, this wasn't an apples-to-apples situation. Nor was Devers in the same class as Betts, a five-tool superstar. Still, the Betts deal occurred recently enough that, for some Sox fans and for members of the baseball industry, the trading of another homegrown star served to pick at a still-painful scab. Alex Speier can be reached at
