FanGraphs Weekly Mailbag: June 21, 2025

By most measures, the Rafael Devers commerce occurred instantly. It got here with out advance discover of his availability, and the Crimson Sox reportedly weren’t buying him round. Instantly, it drew comparisons to the Luka Dončić-Anthony Davis commerce within the NBA, as a result of infrequently in our scoops-driven media panorama, the place even the tiniest rumor is handled as foreign money, does a transaction involving a famous person catch us unexpectedly.

And but, now that the shock has worn off, buying and selling Devers seems like a logical end result to the saga that started in March, when the Crimson Sox signed Alex Bregman to play third base with out giving the incumbent a heads up. The small print of the following rift have been coated at nice size, at FanGraphs and elsewhere, so I gained’t go into them right here. Plenty of the reporting because the commerce has described the scenario in Boston as untenable, and the harm achieved to the connection between Devers and the staff as irreparable. However primarily based on how badly the Crimson Sox botched their preliminary response to the battle, after which saved bungling their subsequent makes an attempt at reconciliation, from my perspective, it looks like they didn’t make repairing it a lot of a precedence.

We’ll deal with your questions concerning the Devers commerce and a lot extra on this week’s FanGraphs mailbag. However first, I’d wish to remind all of you that whereas anybody can submit a query, this mailbag is unique to FanGraphs Members. In case you aren’t but a Member and want to preserve studying, you’ll be able to join a Membership right here. It’s one of the simplest ways to each expertise the positioning and help our employees, and it comes with a bunch of different nice advantages. Additionally, should you’d wish to ask a query for subsequent week’s mailbag, ship me an electronic mail at mailbag@fangraphs.com.