With the 2025 season winding down, Boston Red Sox fans are still reckoning with the fallout from the front office’s decision to trade Rafael Devers away. Devers played extremely well in Boston and no one should argue otherwise, but it is hard to ignore that the Red Sox have played well since the trade while the teams that Devers played for this year struggled.

While some of this is just small sample size weirdness, we are starting to get a glimpse of a bigger picture that could explain how things have gone down since the trade.

Immediately after the blockbuster Devers move, Red Sox front office head Craig Breslow was adamant that he wouldn’t be surprised if Boston won more games without Devers than with him. That is pretty much how things have worked out and Red Sox manager Alex Cora’s comments on the clubhouse’s current chemistry may offer a partial explanation as to why.

Alex Cora’s observations about Red Sox current clubhouse chemistry helps explain while breaking up with Rafael Devers was needed

Look, we know that some of the whispers that Devers was a clubhouse cancer was just revisionist nonsense. Devers’ current Giants teammates love him and it isn’t like the Red Sox weren’t directly responsible for poisoning the well when it comes to communicating with Devers (given how they handled signing Alex Bregman and moving Devers off of third base). Both parties could have handled things a lot better, but that doesn’t change the fact that the relationship was broken and had become unsustainable.

Various reports suggested Devers wasn’t suited to be a leader, which the Red Sox apparently accepted. But because they didn’t ask much of him after he signed his $300 million extension, they felt a position switch wasn’t out of the question. Devers’ immediate protest was seemingly the last straw.

According to Cora, signing Bregman has worked out exactly as the Red Sox hoped it would. He talked about how the “baseball talk” has really elevated and that “starts with Bregman” as a guy who is really driven to win and make a run in the playoffs. Boston hoped that he would bring that dynamic with him after the signing and he has done that and more.

This shouldn’t be taken as a knock against Devers, per se. Some guys are creatures of habit and prefer to be less vocal and just want to go about their jobs. In Devers, he was really good at that job. However, teams with real postseason ambitions need voices in the clubhouse that have both been there before and can help guide the team in the right direction. Bregman simply is that kind of leader, and Devers, regardless of all his other pros and cons, just wasn’t.

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