The Mookie Betts Trade Is Dead… For Now…

After days of trying to rework the Mookie Betts trade, the Minnesota Twins have supposedly pulled out of the deal, per LaVelle E. Neal III of the Star Tribune. However, Neal later clarified the report saying the Twins merely don’t expect a deal to be done, but have not officially pulled out just yet.

The Red Sox were reportedly unhappy with the medicals of Twins pitcher Brusdar Graterol which put the deal in serious jeopardy. Boston was said to have seen Graterol as a starter during negotiations, but only projected him as a reliever after evaluating him further.

Boston was reportedly looking for a top-10 prospect from the Twins to be added to the deal as compensation for Graterol’s poor medical reports, an absurd ask and one Minnesota was unwilling to acquiesce to. The sides were unable to come to a new agreement which led to the Twins losing faith in the deal Saturday afternoon.

This leaves the Red Sox and Dodgers to figure out a solution themselves, which has it’s own host of problems. If the Red Sox were interested in what the Dodgers were willing to offer for prospects, the Twins never would’ve been involved in the first place. If Boston wants to get a deal done, they may have to take a lesser offer from Los Angeles, one that is worse than the one that almost everyone in Boston already hated.

It seems unlikely that the Dodgers would be the ones to cave at this juncture. Although both teams are put in a rough spot if the deal were to fall apart, the Red Sox are in a much more unfortunate position both PR wise, since they were the ones who called for a rework of the deal in the first place, and in taking back David Price, who never had a good relationship with the city to begin with. After this ordeal, things could go from bad to worse for Price in Boston.

Chaim Bloom could always try to find another 3rd team to facilitate the trade, but that could take a while. The Red Sox were supposedly looking to trade Mookie Betts all offseason and it took them 4 months to even come close to completing this deal with the Dodgers and Twins. Who knows how long it could take to find another interested club and work out all the details of an entirely new trade.

Boston’s final option is to backtrack and keep Betts for the 2020 season, but it would create quite an awkward situation for everyone involved from players to GMs to fans and so on. Whatever the outcome, it feels as though these negotiations are far from over and they could stretch well into spring training.

​Photo: (Michael Dwyer – AP Photo)