NEW YORK \u2014 With just under two months until the Aug. 3 trade deadline, it\u2019s too early to make any significant moves, particularly with a murky American League playoff picture. That AL parity, though, has kept the Boston Red Sox in wild-card contention.<\/p>\n
With that in mind, the Red Sox continue to field calls, weighing their options as buyers and sellers.<\/p>\n
With three catchers on the big-league roster \u2014 Carlos Narv\u00e1ez, Connor Wong and Mickey Gasper \u2014 Boston\u2019s surplus is drawing interest. The Red Sox are shopping Wong in particular, according to a league source, and have also fielded calls on relievers Aroldis Chapman, Justin Slaten and Garrett Whitlock. The Red Sox have said \u2014 for now \u2014 they have no interest in dealing anyone from that bullpen trio.<\/p>\n
By the end of the month, Boston\u2019s trade deadline intentions should have more clarity. With 100 games left in the regular season as of Saturday, there is time for the Red Sox to plug the holes in their sinking ship, particularly during a stretch when they will face AL East teams in three of their next four series and four times by the end of June.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think early is probably the right word,\u201d chief baseball officer Craig Breslow said Friday before a convincing 5-3 win over the New York Yankees. \u201c(We\u2019re) having a lot of conversations, a lot of discussions, and I think it\u2019s been kind of true industry-wide. But there are a lot of teams that probably feel pretty similar to us, which is to say that they have confidence in their rosters, they know they\u2019re not playing as well as they\u2019re capable of, and really, nobody is kind of putting the postseason out of reach. So there are a bunch of teams that are in it right now and are thinking along the same lines as we are.\u201d<\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s win showed the potential the Red Sox have too often squandered the very next day. Sonny Gray held New York to three runs in 6 1\/3 innings. Andruw Monasterio and Willson Contreras homered, and Monasterio made a key unassisted double play in the fourth to halt a bigger inning in which New York had already scored.<\/p>\n
The Yankees, of course, were without their linchpin, Aaron Judge, who they learned on Friday will be out for an extended period with a rib cage fracture.<\/a><\/p>\n But that injury may create an opportunity for the Red Sox. For much of the season, they\u2019ve looked like sellers. They arguably should be sellers. But in firing Alex Cora and six coaches on April 25, Breslow said he believed in the roster and wanted to give it time to turn the season around.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we need to run our own race,\u201d he said Friday. \u201cWe need to make sure that we kind of get our own house in order. We need to play better. We need to win more games, and at that point, we can kind of figure out where we are relative to the league. But I think the first thing is to continue to build on the progress that we\u2019ve seen offensively over the last month, and then make sure that we\u2019re pitching consistently well, and we need to win games for any of this to matter.\u201d<\/p>\n