The Boston Red Sox’s underwhelming trade deadline has drawn the ire of just about every fan in New England.

After promising to aggressively buy, the Red Sox came out of Thursday’s deadline with just two additions – rental pitchers Steven Matz and Dustin May. It was a disappointing haul, made worse by the aggressive maneuvers made by just about every other contender.

While much of the attention has been on the Red Sox’s failure to strike a deal for Minnesota Twins starting pitcher Joe Ryan, Boston did at least bring in one starter in May. The other need, first base, went completely unaddressed, and now they’ve got to continue mixing and matching with Abraham Toro and Romy Gonzalez moving forward.

Yandy Díaz of the Tampa Bay Rays seemed like something of a dream target for the Red Sox, and it turns out that the Red Sox did make an attempt to land him from their division rival.

However, Rob Bradford of WEEI reported Friday that Boston essentially never had a chance to land the 34-year-old slugger.

“While the Red Sox were one of the teams to inquire about Yandy Diaz that was never going to be a reality. Rays weren’t super motivated to move him,” wrote Bradford on X.

Boston also pursued former Arizona Diamondbacks third baseman Eugenio Suárez as a first baseman, per Ken Rosenthal and Jen McCaffrey of The Athletic. But Suárez was traded to the Seattle Mariners on Wednesday night, and Boston could not find a pivot in the final 18 hours before the deadline.

For all appearances, the Red Sox simply aimed too high at this deadline and failed to pivot to lesser, still impactful moves. They’ve caught a ton of heat in the initial aftermath of the deadline, and deservingly so.

However, this is still a team that had an excellent July, and that held a playoff spot entering play on Friday. If they don’t make the playoffs, though, chief baseball officer Craig Breslow and the front office will have some pointed questions to answer come October.