The Boston Red Sox acquired Adley Rutschman from the Baltimore Orioles at the Aug. 3 trade deadline, and the price was somehow not what it should have been. The Red Sox sent right-hander Anthony Eyanson, right-hander Kyson Witherspoon, catcher Carlos Narvaez, and outfielder Enddy Azocar along with minor league outfielder Harold Rivas.
That is a real prospect package. Eyanson is a top-50 arm in the sport. Witherspoon has helium. Narvaez is a big-league catcher right now. In a vacuum, that is a fair market return. This trade did not happen in a vacuum.
Adley Rutschman is 28, an All-Star, a Gold Glove-caliber defender, a switch-hitter who controls at-bats, and he still has more than a year of team control left. Players like that do not get moved. When they do, the return is supposed to break the internet. This one did not.
Baltimore should have gotten Marcelo Mayer or Roman Anthony. They did not. They got a very good package that any other selling team would take in a heartbeat and rolled with it. Craig Breslow drove a hard bargain and the Orioles blinked.
The Baltimore side of this is a bigger story than the Boston side. Two and a half years ago the Orioles won 101 games and looked like the model franchise in the sport. A young core, a full farm, a front office everybody wanted to copy. They followed that up by getting swept in the ALDS, missing the playoffs, and now selling at the deadline in back-to-back Augusts.
Trading Rutschman is the white flag. That is not a payroll dump. That is not a rebuild pivot. That is the franchise player getting shipped in-division to a rival that is going to see him 19 times a year for the next decade. Ownership has told the fanbase exactly what it thinks of the fanbase.
The Orioles also moved Taylor Ward to the Mariners on the same day. That is fine on its own. In the context of the Rutschman deal, it is a bloodletting. Baltimore has now gone from prospect-hoarding contender to fire sale in less than three calendar years, and there is not a coherent plan visible from the outside.
The Red Sox get a franchise catcher for the price of some very good prospects. They get to run him out with Wilyer Abreu, Roman Anthony, Ceddanne Rafaela, and a real rotation. They also get to walk him past the Orioles’ dugout 19 times a year, and Fenway is going to be electric when he steps in for the first time.
This is one of the best deadline moves a Boston front office has made in a decade. Rutschman is an anchor at the most important defensive position in the sport. The Red Sox got him without giving up their best prospect. That is a heist.
Somebody in the Baltimore front office is going to have to answer for this in October. Somebody in the Boston front office is going to get a raise.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
