Trading away Shaw was a blunder. Two years Pablo was God-awful -ofc his 2nd year he was hurt. In 2011, 2013, and 2015 Hanley was hurt. You got a young player in Shaw that showed something -power. And we were losing Papi. There were many of us that did not like this trade. Shaw potentially could have beaten out Panda. Going after the one year wonder Thornburgh who played for San Diego was a blunder.
I don't want to make it sound like I'm dumping on DD. The Sox won the division the past 2 years, and this year so far The Sox are a powerhouse. DD has made some very good moves. But for the many who did't like the trade, there was too much risk trading a potential position player starter to go after a ""1 year "proven" reliever."" It would be fine if we knew Shaw wasn't going to be a full-time player for the team without a doubt. But there were questions that he possibly could. Too much risk for this type of reliever from a non-competitive NL team. Giving up the potential full-day starter for this type of reliever was/is a mistake unless you know Shaw can't get the time.
There was some dissent with this trade. It wasn't hindsight.
Every bit of dissent with the trade is hindsight, because you could not have possibly predicted that Shaw would've outperformed his entire career to that point and that Thornburg would almost immediately get hurt out of nowhere. Maybe you considered one of those things, I doubt it, but there's no way you thought both.
Shaw was a low-tier, entirely replaceable 3B when the Sox didn't need such a player (given they had hoped Sandoval could've been exactly that...a low-tier, entirely replaceable 3B, and they also had Devers in the wings,) and Thornburg had just come off a dominant season and addressed an area of serious need at the time in the pen. If you ignore that context and focus entirely on the two vastly unlikely scenarios that actually did unfold, you are using the benefit of hindsight.
You cannot make (or evaluate) trades with the caveat "you can only do that if you knew WITHOUT A DOUBT". That's not how real-life works. You never know for sure, there's always variables and risk in play when it comes to moving (potential) talent for (established) talent, and lastly, the fact that Thornburg pitched for a crappy team means absolutely nothing in terms of single-player evaluation.
If you're going to criticize a move, you need to do a better job than that.