BOSTON — Here’s some blunt, unsolicited advice for the Red Sox: Stop trading with the Yankees, fellas. When you begin your transaction history by sending Babe Ruth to The Bronx for 100 grand and thus hand your hated rival an all-time dynasty for relative pennies, you’ll never even the ledger, anyway. So why even try?
The latest significant move (but not quite that significant!) between history’s greatest sporting foes looks very much today like yet another unqualified winner for New York. Alex Verdugo, who’s matched the hope and exceeded the hype in pinstripes, made his old team pay in a big way in his first game back in Fenway Park.
Verdugo hit the very first pitch he saw here as a Yankee into the center-field bleachers, and later doubled home a run off the Green Monster in left and singled in yet another run. His three-hit, four-RBI performance made for a homecoming from heaven and spurred the Yankees to their baseball-leading 50th victory while dropping the Red Sox back to .500.
The young man with the flashy, diamond chains and original quotes always did have a flair for the dramatic, even if he didn’t turn out to be nearly worth homegrown superstar Mookie Betts the Red Sox foolishly sent to Los Angeles to get him (and a few others).
The swap of Verdugo to the Yankees will never be the worst trade the Red Sox made involving him, as that first one was an all-time doozy — not close to forgivable for this sports-crazed city. It also isn’t the best deal the Yankees made at the Winter Meetings, as they landed his superstar outfield mate Juan Soto at the same event in Nashville in December.
Though Verdugo was seen as mostly a solid left-handed bat and fine glove to fill the Yankees’ long-term left-field hole for a year, he’s turned out to be almost All-Star worthy. He’s unlikely to receive an invite to Arlington, Texas, as he’s sharing an outfield with the two leading MVP candidates — Aaron Judge and Soto — but after a promotion he often hits cleanup in the league’s best lineup.
He’s batted great (.757 OPS), fielded better and proven to be the best quote on the team. Even while trying to stem reports about an alleged rift with Red Sox manager Alex Cora that led to this fortuitous trade, he does it colorfully.
“Me and him, we’re fine. We’re good,” Verdugo said of Cora before the Yankees’ 8-1 victory. “Our families like each other. Our kids like each other. Off the field we have no problem at all. A couple times we bumped heads. And that’s fine. Not everyone’s going to always agree on things. But really, I’ve got nothing but respect for AC.”
After saying a lot, he ended by saying, “That’s all I want to say about AC.”
Deal.
Regarding his baseball deal to New York, after a couple of days of being upset he realized was going to a “great organization,” and so he acclimated himself by shaving off one of the wilder beards going and growing. He immediately revealed a baby face, and eventually a killer desire.
Verdugo, who gestured triumphantly on his happy tour around the bases following his first-inning homer off Brayan Bello, came with the best of recommendations. None other than Judge took a liking to his game the past couple years. So did Aaron Boone. Apparently, every chance Boone had, he nudged GM Brian Cashman.
“I felt like he would bring an element that we missed and definitely could use. So I was excited to get him,” Boone said. “But I think he’s surpassed expectations.”
Cashman made headlines for blowing up at the GM meetings in Scottsdale, Ariz., rather aggressively (and slightly profanely) defending himself and his staff following what he himself described as a “disaster” of a 2023 season. Then a month later, he authored perhaps the best week of a career that’s long and storied (well, it’s now been memorialized in a book, I hear).
The rivals understandably don’t make many deals together. The trade of Verdugo for a middle reliever and two middle-rung (at best) minor leaguers was interesting but soon overshadowed by the move for the incomparable Soto.
We will assume this was by far the best the Red Sox could do for the player who posted an average season in 2023, is a free agent after 2024 and (deserved or not) had a bit of a rep for tardiness. The rivalry isn’t quite what it was, but we will also assume the Red Sox still prefer to trade with others.
We will also assume the Red Sox’s new regime knows what it’s doing. Though they aren’t going to challenge for the AL East this time, they did a nice job with pitchers and young players, and probably made the right call showing restraint in free agency this go-round. They generally didn’t play for the biggest guys, and the closest they came was that now famous Zoom call with Jordan Montgomery, who’s been pitiful in the desert with the Diamondbacks.
Yes indeed, Boston’s new baseball braintrust had themselves a boffo winter, with one notable exception.
