Red Sox's Breslow Aims to Be Buyer at MLB Trade Deadline, 'The Future Has to Be Now'

The Boston Red Sox are fourth in the American League East at 40-43 and recently traded star Rafael Devers to the San Francisco Giants, but the team still feels capable of competing in 2025.

Chief baseball officer Craig Breslow told The Athletic's Jen McCaffrey on Friday that the team plans to be aggresive ahead of the MLB trade deadline.

“I think we’ve talked a lot about looking to the future, at some point, the future has to be now,” Breslow said. “We went into 2025 expecting to compete for the division and expecting to make it to the playoffs. We haven’t played as well as we’re capable of, but that goal still exists, and we’re not so far away that we should be thinking about 2026 or 2027.

“There’s a lot of games to be played between now and the deadline, but we are thinking about how we bolster the team,” he said. “How we do identify the needs that we have and are aggressive in getting those players to put us in a position that we talked about all offseason.”

Boston is eight games behind the New York Yankees, who sit in first place in the division. The team is just three games back from the wild card, but has four teams ahead of it in the wild card race.

One of the Red Sox's struggles through the first half of the season has been consistency on the mound. With Tanner Houck, Hunter Dobbins and other starters dealing with injuries this year, Boston has posted a 4.03 ERA, which ranks 19th in the majors. The team also recently lost starter Kutter Crawford for the season because of an off-field injury.

Breslow noted pitching as an area to improve at the trade deadline.

“We have some depth built up, but whether it’s injury or performance, we just haven’t gotten that run of consistent deep starting pitching,” Breslow said, per McCaffrey. “Garrett (Crochet) has obviously been excellent all season, but we saw the type of team that we can be when our starters are pitching deep into games.”

The injuries aren't limited to the mound, as offseason addition Alex Bregman has been out since May because of a quad injury, and Masataka Yoshida has yet to make his 2025 debut after shoulder surgery during the offseason.

Boston ranks 17th in the majors in batting average at .246 and ranks 10th in runs with 381.

Of course, the team's offense has taken a hit without Devers. Since trading him on June 15, the team has scored more than five runs just one time and has gone 3-7, including a six-game losing streak in the last week. Boston dropped its series opener against the Toronto Blue Jays 9-0 on Friday.

Despite its recent struggles and evident flaws, the Red Sox's hopes of reaching the postseason for the first time since 2021 are not lost, but they'll need to have a big showing at the trade deadline.