Red Sox exec emphatically shoots down Liverpool conspiracy theory about Rafael Devers trade
Liverpool made a major splash in the soccer world last week, agreeing to a record-breaking £116m transfer ($157 million) to acquire Florian Wirtz from Bayer Leverkusen.
Landing the midfielder could be a franchise-altering move.
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Shortly after that, the Boston Red Sox made a franchise-changing move of their own, offloading Rafael Devers and the $271.2 million remaining on his contract in a trade with the San Francisco Giants.
As John Henry and the Fenway Sports Group are the owners of both clubs, a conspiracy theory immediately circulated that the Red Sox were forced to trade Devers because Liverpool had landed Wirtz.
On WEEI's Greg Hill Show Tuesday morning, Boston's Chief Baseball Officer Craig Breslow shot that idea down emphatically.
'That's not just a stretch, it's just completely untrue,' Breslow said. 'In none of the conversations that I have with John, with ownership, about our resources, is the financial implications or situations of any of the other teams a topic.
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'The Red Sox are run independently of any of those other organizations. The timing here was just a matter of lining up on getting the right players back and finding the right situation that represented a trade that we needed to make.'
Breslow also denied a report from Geoff Pontes that the Red Sox had another deal on the table for Devers, but it was vetoed by Henry when the suitor wouldn't take on all of the designated hitter's contract.
'No,' Breslow said. 'When I read that, I was as surprised as anybody else would have been who had no idea that this was a thing or had happened. Absolutely not true.'
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