Red Sox trade: Five quick thoughts on acquiring Adley Rutschman

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LOS ANGELES — Say this for Craig Breslow: He’s taken a big swing.

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The deal that has the Red Sox acquiring catcher Adley Rutschman from the Baltimore Orioles in exchange for Anthony Eyanson, Kyson Witherspoon, Enddy Azocar and Carlos Narvaez is the boldest of strokes for the team’s chief baseball officer.

The Red Sox were ranked dead last in offense from the catching position, with the 25th-ranked OPS and only four homers, ranking them 30th. Rutschman will bolster those rankings.

But, of course, there are complicating factors — several in fact.

1) Rutschman is currently on the IL with a left wrist injury and isn’t ready to play. It’s likely he’ll remain sidelined for a another week or more, shortening the window for him to contribute for the stretch run.

This wouldn’t be the first time the Sox acquired someone in the IL at the deadline – in 2021, Chaim Bloom landed Kyle Schwarber from the Washington Nationals, who was on the IL with a hamstring strain. Obtained on July 31, Schwarber didn’t make his Red Sox debut until Aug. 13.

But that was a soft tissue issue; Rutschman’s injury is more structural, and thus, potentially more problematic, especially when you consider it’s his catching hand and is bound to impact his swing at the plate, too.

2) Rutschman’s injury isn’t the only complicating factor here. It’s hard for a catcher to join a team mid-season and learn an entire pitching staff on the run. Being in the same division as the Red Sox might give Rutschman a bit of an advantage when it comes to familiarity. He’ll know more about their tendencies and stuff than would someone from outside the division.

Still, it’s a big ask, and it’s risky for the Red Sox to shift to a different game-caller and receiver with two-thirds of the season complete. As ineffectual as Carlos Narvaez and Connor Wong have been offensively, the Red Sox staff is ranked third in ERA among MLB’s 30 teams.

That performance helped keep the team afloat when the offense was of little help in the first half of the year, and it’s help drive the team’s current 31-8 run in the last six weeks.

Changing catchers puts that at least somewhat at risk.

3) In addition to battling injuries this year and last, Rutchman’s play over the course of his career has been highly inconsistent.

After posting an OPS of .800 or greater in each of first two years in the big leagues, Rutschman has seen his offensive game slip.

While he did hit 19 homers in 2024, his OPS fell to .709. In 2025, it fell further to .673 as he battled injuries and played just over half a season (90 games).

This year, his OPS is a more respectable .764, but even that was built on the back a strong two weeks stretch from late April through mid-May when he slashed .320/.358/.620; since then, Rutschman has slashed just .214/.309/.346, though those numbers were undoubtedly impacted somewhat by the result of playing through the wrist injury.

4) The Red Sox are getting one more year of control with Rutschman, who is eligible for free agency after the 2027 season.

That doesn’t make him a pure rental, but it’s not a lot of future control, either. That’s especially true when you factor in his current injury and the likelihood that some games may be missed in 2027 due to labor strife.

There were other catchers on the market, some with shorter term commitments (Cincinnati’s Tyler Stephenson) and some with longer (Colorado’s Hunter Goodman). Of course, someone like Goodman would have required a significantly bigger return in terms of prospects.

It will be fascinating to see if the Red Sox move aggressively to extend Rutschman or wait and see how his arrival plays out.

5) The price was huge.

The Red Sox are surrendering three of their top half-dozen prospects (Eyanson, Witherspoon, Azocar) for a year and change of Rutschman. Put another way: they’ve dealt their two best starting pitching prospects and their third-best position player prospect as part of this deal.

One longtime talent evaluator from another organization said he was “completely stunned” by the deal, calling it “one of the most ridiculous trades I’ve ever seen in 30 years.”

The Sox, very clearly, are all-in on this year and next. They’ve wiped out a good chunk of their prospect inventory to make this trade, leaving them with not much to offer if they still want to upgrade shortstop.

If Rutschman is healthy and the Red Sox successfully extend him, then maybe this deal makes some sense.

For now, it appears to be a significant overpay.

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