Six weeks ago the Red Sox were dead. Not figuratively — 32-46, last place in the AL East, playoff odds sitting at 9.4%, and a fanbase ready to write off the season. Now they're 52-49, holding a Wild Card spot, and the front office is spending its final week before the deadline deciding how aggressively to add instead of what to sell off.
MLB Trade Rumors dropped its deadline outlook on Boston on Thursday, and the numbers behind the turnaround are absurd: a 20-3 stretch over the last 23 games that flipped the entire calculus for Craig Breslow's front office.
MLB Trade Rumors laid out where the Red Sox stand heading into the Aug. 3 deadline.
The needs are pretty clearly defined even if the plan is still fluid. Boston's middle infield has been a mess — Trevor Story is out after May hernia surgery and Marcelo Mayer is dealing with a stress reaction, leaving Tsung-Che Cheng and Anthony Seigler holding down the fort without much to show for it. Add in a want for a right-handed bat, catcher help, rotation depth and bullpen reinforcement, and it's a long shopping list for a team that was supposedly selling a month and a half ago.
There is a silver lining in the infield mess: Caleb Durbin has been legitimately good since June, hitting.297/.356/.527 after a brutal.183/.250/.280 start, and Willson Contreras has quietly stabilized first base. That gives Boston some internal flexibility to be surgical rather than desperate.
The bigger swing factor is the pitching staff, where Sonny Gray and Aroldis Chapman both carry contract wrinkles that complicate any pivot back to selling — Gray has a full no-trade clause, and Chapman's 2027 option locks in once he crosses 40 innings. That's part of why reporting has described Boston's approach as staying in both lanes at once, buying up front while keeping an eye on what pieces still make sense to move.
Buster Olney has reported Boston is being aggressive about adding a right-handed hitter, to the point of being willing to absorb a bad contract to get one. For a team that fired its manager a month into the season and looked completely lost through Memorial Day, that's a wild turn of events — and it's exactly why the next 10 days before the deadline matter so much for how this Red Sox season gets remembered.