BOSTON — With less than two days before the MLB trade deadline, Red Sox manager Alex Cora wanted to clear the air on behalf of the organization’s front office.
“They’re working. They’re working hard,” Cora said before Monday night’s series opener against the Mariners at Fenway Park. “It’s part of it, right? There are so many teams in the mix. … When you look around, not much has happened, right? We just gotta be patient and we’ll see, but they’re working hard. They are.”
Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow identified three targeted areas of improvement following the All-Star break — starting pitching, relief pitching and right-handed hitting. So far, Boston has (technically) filled all three by adding starter James Paxton from the Dodgers, right-handed-hitting catcher Danny Jansen from the Blue Jays, and most recently, relief pitcher Quinn Priester from the Pirates — hours before Monday’s game.
Yet, after a critical three-game weekend series with the American League East-rival Yankees, the bullpen void made itself the most apparent, allowing New York to take two of three in Boston. Red Sox relievers were charged with surrendering 12 earned runs to the Yankees throughout the series, which included a Saturday night slugfest where Boston had New York down to its final strike but still allowed the division’s second-place club to snag a come-from-behind win — dragging the Red Sox to a 2-7 start to 2024’s second half. Boston dropped three to the Dodgers, two to the Rockies and two to the Yankees and despite the ice-cold slump, the postseason-hopeful Red Sox are still just 6 1/2 games behind the first-place Orioles in the AL East standings.
That’s a (very) feasible deficit with two-plus months left in the season. The entire division, including the Orioles and Yankees, have shown their vulnerabilities as they’ve struggled to amass a significant lead over anyone except for the last-place Blue Jays. However, the difference is Boston is working with utilizing. a young, inexperienced group of up-and-comers taking the place of a handful of injured veterans expected to play key roles coming into the season; such as Lucas Giolito, Garrett Whitlock, Trevor Story, Triston Casas and Vaughn Grissom.
Although the clock is ticking, the Red Sox still have until 6 p.m. ET on Tuesday to strike any final swaps before the roster is set for Boston to continue embarking on its hunt for clinching a spot in the playoffs.
