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Red Sox manager Alex Cora
The Boston Red Sox and Detroit Tigers have something in common as the 2025 season gets underway. They are both off to disappointing starts. The Red Sox, after entering the season with high expectations and winning their opener in Texas, dropped the next three straight to the Rangers.
The Tigers, after a surprising run to the playoffs in 2024 for the first time in a decade, went in to Los Angeles to open their new season and proceeded to lose three straight to the World Series champion Dodgers.
According to a new trade proposal issued by writer TJ French of Athlon Sports on Saturday, the Red Sox and the Tigers could soon have something else in common — a major, and surprising, trade.
Tigers Need an Outfielder — Now
The proposed trade would fill a need for both teams. The Tigers came out of Spring Training down three outfielders, who were forced to open the season on the injured list. Parker Meadows and Matt Vierling and third-string centerfielder Wenceel Pérez who started 141 games in center field among them last year are all out of action with various ailments for at least the first several weeks of the 2025 campaign.
While the Tigers are short on outfielders, the Red Sox have a shortage of catching depth. Regular catcher Connor Wong provided respectable though unspectacular offense in 2024 with a .758 OPS and 13 home runs in 446 at-bats. But defensively, Wong has been a liability to say the least. According to the analytical site Fielding Bible, he allowed 16 more runs to score than the average catcher. That number placed Wong second-to-last among all Major League backstops.
The Red Sox dealt their 2023 first-round draft pick Kyle Teel, who they had targeted as their catcher of the future, to the Chicago White Sox for ace lefty Garrett Crochet in the offseason, leaving Boston with no pipeline of catching talent to take over from Wong.
The new trade proposal benefits both teams, but is nonetheless a stunner because the outfielder sent by the Red Sox to Detroit in this scenario was a Gold Glover and Rookie of the Year candidate last season, and despite the Red Sox’ 1-3 record is off to a torrid start this season — easily the Red Sox hottest hitter in the early going with seven hits, two home runs and five walks without striking out at all in 15 plate appearances.
New Catcher of the Future Would Join Red Sox
That outfielder is 25-year-old Venezuela native Wilyer Abreu. But as hot as he is, Abreu is arguably expendable for the Red Sox because the organization has MLB’s No. 1 overall prospect, per Baseball Prospectus, playing in Triple-A at Worcester. Roman Anthony has already hit two home runs and stolen four bases for the WooSox in just two games.
The catcher the Tigers would send in return for Abreu is 21-year-old Thayron Liranzo, who was signed by the Los Angeles Dodgers out of the Dominican Republic in 2021, but traded to Detroit in a package for pitcher Jack Flaherty last season.
“In the past two seasons in MiLB, (Liranzo) has hit 36 home runs and 46 doubles in nearly 700 at-bats,” noted French in his Athlon Sports trade proposal. “Anthony (is) seemingly ready for his MLB debut, and likely will get called up shortly into the season and is considered the future of the organization, so moving off Abreu for Anthony’s future stardom isn’t a bad idea.”
Liranzo has a total of 45 home runs and an .856 OPS in 1,102 minor league plate appearances, but has yet to play above the Single-A level, so he would likely be ready for the big leagues sometime shortly before 2029 when Wong becomes a free agent.
Jonathan Vankin JONATHAN VANKIN is an award-winning journalist and writer who now covers baseball and other sports for Heavy.com. He twice won New England Press Association awards for sports feature writing. Vankin is also the author of five nonfiction books on a variety of topics, as well as nine graphic novels including most recently “Last of the Gladiators” published by Dynamite Entertainment. More about Jonathan Vankin
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