Stand back! John W Henry is about to blow up the Boston Red Sox.
A seven-game skid dropped his team to 42-53 and the bottom of the American League East, 11 games behind the first-place New York Yankees. “Hopeless” is the operative word.
Confronted with dire circumstances twice in the past three seasons, the man who also owns Liverpool in the Premier League each time chose to trade away expensive veterans ahead of the July 31 trade deadline: Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford and Josh Beckett in 2012; Jon Lester, Andrew Miller and John Lackey in 2014.
The 2013 world champions are expected to do the same in the coming days now that their pitching staff is injury-ravaged and their hitting has gone quiet.
As harsh as it may seem to fans to trade away a club’s best players, the chances of picking up an inexpensive player whose best years are ahead of him are too good to ignore.
The club are expected to try to move outfielder Shane Victorino, first baseman Mike Napoli and closer Koji Uehara. The Sox would love to get rid of disappointing newcomers Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval, too, but they are so expensive, old and unproductive that finding takers is unlikely.
Henry makes exceptions in what otherwise is a scorched-earth policy. The Red Sox are unlikely to give up fan favourites Dustin Pedroia and David Ortiz, to name two players who were involved in Boston’s three World Series triumphs in this century.
But everyone else is sitting on a powder keg. Henry will push the plunger any day now.
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