The Red Sox traded Rafael Devers because they felt he wasn’t willing to do whatever it takes to win.

Though that wasn’t said explicitly, Red Sox CEO Sam Kennedy and chief baseball officer Craig Breslow made that abundantly clear over the course of their 40-minute press conference addressing the stunning trade. When asked why they felt it was necessary to abruptly deal one of the most productive hitters in team history, the pair repeatedly cited the team’s culture and the need to foster a winning environment.

Left unsaid was the fact they felt Devers had become detrimental to those efforts.

“As we think about the identity and the culture and the environment that’s created by great teams, there was something amiss here,” Breslow said, “and it was something that we needed to act decisively to course-correct.”

The drama that festered between the Red Sox and Devers played out in plain view. Devers became frustrated after club officials didn’t communicate that they were considering moving him off third base until the eve of spring training, and after the Red Sox signed Alex Bregman he publicly resisted the notion of giving up his spot. Eventually he relented and shifted to designated hitter, but tensions flared again when Triston Casas suffered a season-ending knee injury, prompting Breslow to approach Devers and ask if he’d step in and play first base.

Again, Devers refused and publicly aired out the team, taking specific aim at Breslow while suggesting the chief baseball officer might have something against him. That prompted top club officials, including principal owner John Henry, to fly to Kansas City to clear the air, where the two sides had a “candid” and “honest” conversation.

Speaking Monday, Breslow made a point to reference how past Red Sox championship teams were comprised of players who were willing to make sacrifices for the betterment of the team. Or put another way, do what Devers had emphatically refused to do.

“What it keeps coming to is this idea that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, that each individual is contributing and finding a way to help a team win,” Breslow said. “It’s the willingness to step up and sacrifice at times of need and essentially do whatever’s necessary to help the team win. And I think that’s the identity, this relentless pursuit of winning, that we’re looking for. It’s the identity that the World Series championship teams have had in the past.”

Devers presence as the club’s longest-tenured and highest paid player had become an obvious roadblock to those efforts, and Breslow even implied that they were concerned he could negatively impact the club’s up-and-coming young standouts.

“We would not have made this trade if we didn’t think it was best for the organization and the vision and the beliefs and culture that we’re trying to create,” Breslow said. “We have a number of young players who are in the big leagues and we’re really excited about them and we’re very, very deliberate and intentional about the environment that we want to create.”

Though Kennedy and Breslow declined to specify what they wanted from Devers that he was unwilling or unable to do, they left little room for doubt about why they felt the trade had to happen and why it couldn’t wait. Now the Red Sox and Devers will go their separate ways, and only time will tell if the bold move will turn out to be the right one.

Youth movement

“There was no mandate,” said Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow, of the San Francisco Giants taking on the entire remaining cost of Rafael Devers’ franchise-record contract. “The mandate is to assemble the best team that we possible could. And in order to do that, we needed to create a more functional roster and give certain guys more playing time, be able to rotate through the DH spot, potentially match-up there.”

The way Breslow and Red Sox president Sam Kennedy spoke in a nearly-45-minute Zoom press conference before Monday game in Seattle, Sunday’s stunning trade was about doing what was best for the team. Not an irreparable breakdown of the relationship between a storied franchise and its superstar, or Devers’ public rebuke of his employers, or trying to shed more guaranteed salary than Red Sox had ever committed to any player.

“It was a baseball trade,” Kennedy said, “because we did what we felt was in the best interests of the Red Sox on and off the field to win championships… it was a baseball trade, without question.”

Devers, in his purported refusal to return to playing a position, after the Red Sox relegated him to designated hitter in spring training, was apparently the logjam preventing the club’s youth movement from taking off, in terms of both on- and off-field aspect.

“We’re really excited about the injection of youth and the team-first attitude of that youth that’s coming into the organization and the culture that’s being built in this clubhouse,” Kennedy said.

Both Kennedy and Breslow declined to elaborate on what, specifically, made Devers no longer fit in their ideal baseball environment. Instead, as Red Sox leadership has done for most of the last half-decade, they tried to redirect focus to the future.

“This was not a decision that was made lightly or that was made suddenly, you know, you don’t trade Raffy Devers simply because you have a player coming off the (injured list) and you need to make a move,” Breslow said. “But we are mindful of balancing what we believe to be this kind of, really exciting young core, with the opportunity to play in the big leagues, and there were a number of paths that we felt we could explore in order to get a more kind of cohesive and more functional roster.”

When pressed about the fact that the trade came at a time when the Red Sox have been playing their best, most consistent baseball of the season, and hours after they completed a sweep of the Yankees in which Devers homered for his 500th career extra-base hit, Breslow admitted, “The timing was absolutely not great.”

In the short-term, he explained that without Devers, the Red Sox can rotate players through the DH spot. He suggested they might use the new financial flexibility to upgrade the starting rotation, bullpen, or first base before the midsummer trade deadline, noting that Triston Casas’ return is a long ways off.

For now, though, the Red Sox offense will undoubtedly be less productive without the man who was, until Sunday, the best designated hitter in the American League. That is the sacrifice the front office is willing to make for the future.

“When you move a player of Raffy’s caliber, when you take that bat out of the lineup, how could I sit here and say that we’re a better team? And I acknowledge that on paper, we’re not going to have the same lineup that we did,” Breslow said, “but this isn’t about the game that is played on paper. This is about the game that’s played on the field, and ultimately about winning the most games that we can.”