This year, with the Sox 2½ games out of a wild-card spot, other teams remained unclear on whether the Sox were looking to add reinforcements to their team or willing to trade veterans to other clubs in the hours and minutes before the deadline to consummate deals.
Perhaps most notably, according to multiple major league sources, the Sox were deep in talks with the Marlins on the day of the deadline about a deal that would have sent Justin Turner to Miami for Edward Cabrera (a 25-year-old righthanded starter with a potentially dominant fastball) and more.
The team also had deals on the table for James Paxton — multiple industry officials said the Sox could have acquired major league-ready pitching, perhaps with the ceiling of a back-end starter, despite the known injury risks involving the lefthander — and Kenley Jansen.
In declining such deals, industry officials believe the Sox missed a major opportunity to put themselves in a much better spot for 2024 and beyond. That stance might have been understandable had the team instead made moves to pursue a long shot playoff push. But aside from the buy-low addition of Luis Urías, the team stood pat.
That approach added to fairly widespread frustration by officials of other clubs when it came to making trades with the Red Sox under Bloom, who was viewed as a difficult trade partner who overvalued his own players in ways that made it hard to move quickly
