The Boston Red Sox shocked the baseball world on Sunday.

Boston traded Rafael Devers to the San Francisco Giants on Sunday night in one of the biggest mid-season trades you will see. It’s not every day you see a potentially top 10 slugger moved with over eight years of control left.

It took a while for the Red Sox to speak about the move. Boston hopped on a cross-country flight shortly after the trade hit social media. Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow and president and chief executive officer Sam Kennedy spoke to the media on Monday night, a little over 24 hours after reports surfaced.

Kennedy opened the press conference with a statement.

“This decision was not taken lightly,” Kennedy said. “Nor did it come suddenly. We obviously, over the last week or so, reached an inflection point. As difficult as that inflection point was, as the hallmark of this organization over the last 24 years, we acted boldly and decisively and we came to the very difficult decision to make a deal that we think serves the best interest of the Boston Red Sox in the short term and in the long term.”

Breslow followed with more insight.

“There was no mandate,” Breslow said when asked if there was a requirement to get rid of Devers’ whole contract. “The mandate is to assemble the best team that we possibly could. 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, and also this is a roster that certainly has some needs and we can talk about starting pitching and bullpen help and we think we addressed some of those with the return we had in this deal. Additionally, it gives us some resources as we head toward the deadline.”

Kennedy followed up once again about ongoing issues the team had with Devers.

“We couldn’t find alignment with Raffy,” Kennedy said. “It’s the truth. We all worked at it over the last several months going back to the offseason starting with Alex Cora and Craig and the staff and then up to me and all the way up to John Henry. We worked at it. We had a different vision for him going forward than he had and we couldn’t get there. We couldn’t find alignment and we reached that inflection point and made the decision to make a big move.”

The Devers era is over in Boston. What’s next?

More MLB: Red Sox Bombshell: Insiders Go Behind Scenes Of Rafael Devers Trade