The move came as a shock to Red Sox fans still salty over the salary dump of Mookie Betts in 2020 – a year after he won the AL MVP – in a trade that yielded little in return. The team also let Xander Bogaerts leave as a free agent before deciding that Devers was the player they were willing to invest in.

While the Red Sox front office kept reiterating that it was a pure baseball trade, the honest truth is that it was a culture trade. They didn’t believe they could win another championship with Devers. They believed he was the wrong guy to be the centerpiece of the franchise. They didn’t think he would become a leader. So, he is gone.

The Boston Red Sox are expected to "shop aggressively" for a "high-money" player at the MLB trade deadline despite selling Rafael Devers.

The Boston Red Sox shocked the baseball world when they traded Rafael Devers to the San Francisco Giants. David Ortiz thinks Devers is partly to blame.

SEATTLE — Manager Alex Cora addressed his players after the Red Sox sent slugger Rafael Devers to the San Francisco Giants in a shocking blockbuster trade Sunday evening.

In layman’s terms for basketball fans, the Rafael Devers trade from the Boston Red Sox to the San Francisco Giants may just be the baseball equivalent of Luka Dončić being shipped to the Los Angeles Lakers at the NBA trade deadline.

Even after moving on from Rafael Devers, the Red Sox reportedly plan on reinvesting the money saved by Sunday's trade right away.

The anecdote serves to illustrate the reputation the pitcher-turned-executive has cultivated in Boston, which traded its best hitter to San Francisco on Sunday.