Alex Verdugo’s messy Red Sox breaking point led to Yankees trade
The Yankees may have done the Red Sox a big favor by acquiring outfielder Alex Verdugo.
Tuesday’s surprising trade that sent Verdugo to the Yankees for three pitching prospects “cleaned up one of the messes (former chief baseball officer) Chaim Bloom left behind,” according to the Boston Globe.
Verdugo reportedly secured his exit from Boston this past Aug. 5 when he arrived late for a home game, which led to manager Alex Cora benching him.
Cora had previously benched Verdugo for not hustling, but this one hurt more.
“I decided not to play [him],” Cora said at the time, per the Globe. “I think today we took a step back as a team. We have to make sure everybody’s available every single day here for us to get to wherever we’re going to go. And that wasn’t the case. And as a manager, I’ve got to take charge of this and I decided he wasn’t gonna play.
“I’m very disappointed. This is probably one of my worst days here in this organization.”
That incident made it easy for the Red Sox to prepare to move on from Verdugo, who is entering the last year of his contract.
While Verdugo is a solid player, he’s not the type of game-changer where a team would overlook any issues to ensure he remains with the team.
“But this was more about the Red Sox deciding they had to stand for something,” the Globe’s Pete Abraham wrote about the trade.
Verdugo indicated to The Athletic he felt his transgressions were handled differently than others.
“I don’t feel any hard feelings. I don’t feel bad about it,” Verudgo said. “I think for me there were certain things that could have maybe handled a little bit differently. But at the end of the day, I kind of have been the frontrunner in a lot of categories where I kind of get aired out or I get a little bit of discipline that gets heard about. I kind of dealt with that my whole entire career. I’m used to it in that regard.”
