Key Points
Bullet point summary by AI
- A blockbuster trade would see the Giants offer to pay half of a star player's remaining $226.5 million contract
- The move would leave Boston assuming a massive salary dump while avoiding any prospect cost
- The scenario creates perfect comedic tension between ownership messaging and fan expectations
“I do not pretend to understand the sports universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards comedy.” Something like that.
I believe in the power of comedic determinism in sports, and Rafael Devers getting traded back to the Boston Red Sox, with the Giants assuming half his salary, would be the funniest thing ever. Like ever. I would never recover; there would be a real chance I perish from laughing like that guy in Mary Poppins. My headstone would read, “Died laughing after Rafael Devers was traded back to the Red Sox,” and it would be glorious.
DISCLAIMER #1: This is not going to happen. If you think Giants president Buster Posey would tank this level of public embarrassment less than a year into Devers’ San Francisco tenure, you are out of your mind. Nor do I think Red Sox counterpart Craig Breslow has any interest in having Devers on his baseball team, given he’s arguably the worst player in Major League Baseball right now. And if you think Devers is going to welcome a trade back to BOSTON after how they treated him, you are out of whatever mind you had left. Nevertheless, the fact that this is even something I can write about and even be 10 percent serious is evidence that we are luminous beings, not this crude matter. Let’s do this thing.
Why the Red Sox trading for Rafael Devers back would be incredible on every level
The Giants would reportedly “love to unload” the completely heinous $226.5 million remaining on Devers’ contract. And yeah I … (chuckles) yeah I, uh, bet they would! Devers has been a disaster all year, looks to be on the other side of the age cliff (somehow, I mean he’s only 29) and could easily be the worst contract in sports. That said, the Giants could go crawling on their knees to some team and offer to pay half his salary to at least get ahead of this thing.
It would be the single most profound admission of defeat in American sports since the Washington Wizards amnesty-claused Andray Blatche before his extension even kicked in. Nevertheless, pride defeats its own end, and San Francisco doesn’t have an ownership group that is fine shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars to people who don’t deserve it. Paying half his salary might be the only way to cut the loss.
(DISCLAIMER #2: This feels like a good time to remind everyone this is not going to happen)
But now we bring the Red Sox to the party. If we just conveniently forget all the baggage associated with Devers and Boston, all the beef that came out of the “hey you don’t play third base anymore bro, Alex Bregman does” stuff an offseason ago and just treat this as a baseball transaction, the price for Boston to acquire Devers back would be … free. They’d be assuming over $100 million of a contract that is so underwater it’s in that submarine that James Cameron took to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
There is no reason to believe Devers would help Boston offensively, he doesn’t even really fit the team unless he’s playing third again (absolutely not) since Willson Contreras is basically Boston’s best player right now at first base and the Sox don’t need any more people to platoon at DH.
Trading for Devers back would cause mass confusion in Boston
But again, he’d be free, so it doesn’t even matter if he’s good so long as ownership is willing to pay. There is (checks notes) still no salary cap in the MLB, so if the ultra-billionaires at the Fenway Sports Group can deal, so can I. And it would throw every single “sell the team” chant in Boston into total confusion and hysteria overnight.
(Scene at a bar in Boston after this happens): “Wait, so John Henry green lit a trade to take Devers and $113 million back? Wait, I thought we didn’t spend money in Boston? So we basically just … traded $113 million to the Giants for Caleb Durbin and Andruw Monasterio at the end of the day? I mean, that seems good.”
It does, doesn’t it? And if that doesn’t work for you, this is a fantasy trade, so let’s live in a fantasy world. Let’s just … declare that Devers is in the world’s most jarring funk, and he will soon return to a version of the All-Star slugger the Giants traded for (DISCLAIMER #3: He won’t). Let’s declare that the funk was caused by a lingering association with the Red Sox managerial and hitting staff, all of whom were fired in April because the team cannot hit. Back on the Red Sox with new, hopefully better hitting coaches? Eh? Are we cooking with something?
Perhaps we are cooking with rocket fuel, because we’re 800 words in and I think the kitchen is on fire. Look: you can’t be sensible all the time, and insane, perfect, glorious fake trades only come around once in a generation. I had to capitalize on this idea, because even the 0.000000001 percent chance this could happen is enough for me. Because if it does, I will be set for life on comedy. No one ever has to tell a joke again.
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