State of the Sox: Some questions remain from tumultuous week

It’s not everyday — or every year — that a team makes four trades in the span of a little more than a week. But that’s what happened to the Red Sox in the waning days of July and the first few days of August.

In a dizzying stretch of activity, the Red Sox unloaded eight players and got back seven in return. The moves were controversial in nature, and frankly, somewhat shocking — enough so that, days later, they’re still reverberating, and will for some time.

Accordingly, rather than tackling a single topic, let’s review several.

1) The Red Sox’ pursuit of a controllable shortstop.

It’s easy to see what the Red Sox were up to with the moves they made. In acquiring Adley Rutchman and Curtis Mead, the Sox looked to bolster and deepen their lineup. With Eli White, they improved their outfield depth and defense, and with Erik Miller, strengthened their bullpen with a lefthanded swing-and-miss option.

But a lingering question remains with what the Red Sox tried to do, but ultimately didn’t: Acquire a shortstop with long-term control.

On the face of it, that might make some sense. The team had clearly lost confidence in Marcelo Mayer and his ceiling, and Trevor Story has just one year of control remaining. Given his injury history, he could hardly be regarded as dependable this year and next.

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But the Red Sox also have an elite shortstop prospect at Triple A in Franklin Arias, whom some outlets have as a Top 5 prospect in the industry. Why would the Red Sox be interested in dealing for Zach Neto, Otto Lopez, C.J. Abrams or Elly De La Cruz when Arias is probably no more than a half season away?

Keep in mind, the shortstops the Red Sox pursued weren’t rentals for the rest of the year. They each had multiple years of control remaining.

Does that suggest that, despite the praise for Arias and the projections that have him becoming a star, are not trusted by the Red Sox? Do they have doubts about his ability to play shortstop long-term? Have the struggles of Mayer, Kristian Campbell and others led them to be skeptical about all prospects?

As it turned out, the Red Sox didn’t acquire a shortstop. But that was presumably because they couldn’t match up and/or the asking price remained prohibitive. The point is, they tried.

2) The Sox’ self-scouting will determine whether the Rutschman deal was a success.

Teams hoard top prospects and are loathe to deal them away. Every executive lives in abject fear that they’ve traded away the next John Smoltz or Jeff Bagwell, both of whom were once dealt at the deadline for rentals.

Despite Dave Dombrowski’s reputation as someone who doesn’t value prospects enough, he seldom made the wrong call when he dipped into the prospect inventory to address more pressing needs.

In fact, the Red Sox have largely done a good job in the last decade of not trading away the wrong prospects. Thus, the Sox gave up on Yoan Moncada to get Chris Sale, but not, importantly, Rafael Devers.

More recently, it’s still premature to evaluate the package of prospects they surrendered for Garrett Crochet, but for now, there are no lingering regrets. Chase Meidroth has become a solid regular, but not a star. Kyle Teel has seen his development interrupted by injury. And Braden Montgomery is less than 50 games into his major league career.

To date, though, there’s been nothing that has provided them with instant seller’s remorse.

Will the same be said of Anthony Eyanson, Kyson Witherspoon or Enddy Azocar? Time will tell.

In a perfect world, the Red Sox will have succeeded in both inflating the value of their own prospects so as to obtain maximum return while also retaining the ones that they truly wish to retain.

3) What does the Red Sox’ trade deadline activity say about the upcoming offseason?

The upcoming free agent class this winter is thin. Among position players, the best are probably Jazz Chisholm Jr. Randy Arozarena and J.P. Crawford. In other words, there are no game-changers.

Did the lack of impact free agents dirve the Red Sox to be more aggressive at the deadline, knowing that there was little of impact to be had this winter. That could partly explain their interest in controllable shortstops, though it still doesn’t address the Arias half of the equation.

Then there’s the upcoming labor mess. With a Dec. 1 lockout 99 percent assured, that could squeeze a lot of activity into November, which could produce a highly busy month of free agent signings and trades.

Then again, given the uncertainty over what will be included in the new CBA — a salary cap? tougher CBT penalties? — did the Red Sox decide that there won’t be much movement at all and opt to strike now?

The truth is, neither the Red Sox nor the rest of industry know what’s ahead. But the opportunity to acquire talent now and have it in place for the final two months of this regular season and into October evidently appeared to be irresistible.

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