Boston Red Sox
“Once we had an harm at first base his unwillingness to play that place was extraordinarily discouraging.”
The Purple Sox opened spring coaching in 2025 with one of many prime sluggers in baseball on their roster in Rafael Devers.
Just some months later, the then-28-year-old Devers was shipped out to the West Coast — with Boston buying and selling Devers to the San Francisco Giants following a tumultuous stretch between the Red Sox and their former franchise player.
Speaking to The Boston Globe’s Pete Abraham on Sunday, Purple Sox chairman Tom Werner was candid when requested to mirror on Devers’ ultimate months with Boston.
“I don’t like to talk ailing of any participant. I’d wish to say that he’s a beautiful particular person,” Werner advised Abraham. “However, in fact, once we had an harm at first base his unwillingness to play that place was extraordinarily discouraging.”
The strife between the Purple Sox and Devers started final February after the Purple Sox signed Alex Bregman — with Boston anticipating the two-time World Sequence champion to take over at third base and shift Devers to DH.
Transferring Devers — who led the AL in errors each season at third from 2018-24 — off third and having him change into a full-time DH would seemingly profit all events.
However Devers was upfront about his displeasure with being moved off the recent nook.
“Third base is my place,” Devers told reporters in Fort Myers last February. “It’s what I’ve performed. I don’t know what their plans are. I do know we had a dialog. I made it clear, type of what my wishes had been and no matter occurs from right here, I don’t know.”
Whereas Devers finally relented and moved to DH as soon as the season started, issues unraveled as soon as once more after first baseman Triston Casas suffered a season-ending knee harm in Might.
Regardless of the emptiness at first, Devers refused to maneuver from DH again to the infield — calling out Purple Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow within the course of.
“I do know I’m a ballplayer however on the identical time, they’ll’t anticipate me to play each single place on the market,” Devers mentioned final Might. “In spring coaching, they talked to me and mainly advised me to place away my glove — that I wasn’t going to play another place however DH. So proper now, I simply really feel prefer it’s not an acceptable determination by them to ask me to play one other place.”
Just a little over a month later, Devers was traded.
“It was a discouraging episode,” Werner mentioned. “Simply decide up a glove.”
Talking to reporters from Fort Myers on Sunday, Purple Sox president and CEO Sam Kennedy acknowledged that the franchise doubtless would have dealt with issues in a different way final winter and spring provided that the top end result was Devers being dealt to San Francisco.
“Would we have now achieved issues in a different way main into it? Completely,” Kennedy said of Devers. “You query your self: The place did we make errors? What may we have now achieved higher? However on the finish of the day, we had been confronted with a choice that was a tough one, and we made it and are actually happy with everyone who labored collectively on that. Time will inform. We’ll see how the outcomes are.”
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