One year later, the Rafael Devers trade is a win-win — just not for the Red Sox or Giants
One year after the most contentious trade of the 2025 MLB season, it's easy to forget just how bad things got between Rafael Devers and the Boston Red Sox.
The first two months of the season saw Devers clash with Red Sox management over a forced position change after the team signed Alex Bregman to take over Devers’ former home at third base, airing out grievanceaftergrievance in the public sphere. Adding to the stakes was his $330 million contract, with eight seasons remaining after 2025.
The San Francisco Giants wound up being the team to resolve the tension, acquiring Devers in a blockbuster deal and installing him at … first base, the position he fought so hard to avoid in Boston. It was full confirmation that the dispute had turned personal for the three-time All-Star and 2018 World Series champion.
We can now report that 12 months later, two teams got a happy ending through this trade, with talents that could contribute to their big-league squads for years to come. Those teams just aren't the Red Sox or Giants.
They are the Milwaukee Brewers and Los Angeles Dodgers.
How 2 uninvolved teams won the Rafael Devers trade
To understand how this all went so badly for the Red Sox and Giants, let's take a look at the full Devers trade.
Giants get: first baseman Rafael Devers
Red Sox get: starting pitcher Jordan Hicks, starting pitcher Kyle Harrison, minor-league outfielder James Tibbs III, minor-league pitcher Jose Bello
That's four players received by Boston in exchange for Devers and the remaining $254.5 million on his contract.
Let's start this breakdown by noting the less important parts of the return. Hicks posted an 8.20 ERA for the Red Sox and got traded in the offseason for minor-league pitcher Gage Ziehl, who has a 5.40 ERA at Double-A this year and is 20th on Boston's MLB Pipeline prospect list. Bello isn't on that top-30 prospects list.
The two important players were Harrison, a former top prospect who hadn't done much in his big-league career with San Francisco, and Tibbs, the Giants' 2024 first-round draft pick. Neither of those guys is in the Boston organization anymore, and that's where this gets hairy for Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow.
Both Harrison and Tibbs were subsequently traded. Tibbs was dealt to the Dodgers at last summer’s trade deadline, and Harrison was sent to the Brewers in the offseason.
Here are the deals:
Red Sox get: starting pitcher Dustin May
Dodgers get: minor-league outfielder James Tibbs III, minor-league outfielder Zach Ehrhard
And …
Red Sox get: third baseman Caleb Durbin, infielder Andruw Monasterio, minor-league infielder Anthony Seigler, future considerations
Brewers get: starting pitcher Kyle Harrison, infielder David Hamilton, minor-league pitcher Shane Drohan
To summarize, the former trade is the Red Sox quickly offloading Tibbs after a slow start in Double-A (.586 OPS) in exchange for a rental pitcher. The latter is the Red Sox giving up a talented arm in acquire a Bregman replacement at third base.
As things currently stand, both moves are abject disasters for the Red Sox. Harrison has seemingly unlocked his potential in Milwaukee and has been the best non-Jacob Misiorowski pitcher on the Brewers this season, while Durbin is currently slashing .194/.255/.313.
May, a high-octane arm who struggled to stay healthy in Los Angeles, posted a 5.40 ERA in six games (five starts) for the Red Sox, then left in free agency for the St. Louis Cardinals. In exchange for that, the Dodgers got Tibbs, an outfielder who is currently slashing .307/.422/.614 at Triple-A Oklahoma City and leads all players at the level with a 1.036 OPS.
Tibbs would likely be in the majors right now with nearly any other organization. At present, he’s blocked by Teoscar Hernández and Kyle Tucker in the outfielder corners, Freddie Freeman at first base and Shohei Ohtani at designated hitter. But make no mistake: 23-year-old former first-round picks with an OPS above 1.000 at Triple-A are coveted in MLB.
We know this especially because the Boston Globe's Tim Healey reported last week that the Dodgers "couldn't agree to [the trade] fast enough" when the Red Sox put Tibbs on the table.
No one wants Rafael Devers now
Turning our attention back to Devers, things aren’t looking too hot in San Francisco right now.
The Giants acquired Devers because they were desperate for another middle-of-the-order bat and had plenty of playing time available at both first base and designated hitter. Devers was solid enough in his first half-season with the team, posting nearly 2 WAR by Baseball Reference's calculations in 90 games.
This year, he is slashing .235/.293/.413 with nine homers while primarily playing first base, with a career-high 30.3% strikeout rate and a career-low .178 isolated power. That's not odiously bad, until you remember that A) he turns 30 this offseason and B) the Giants owe him $225 million over the next seven seasons because they took on the full financial freight from the Red Sox.
That is, bar none, one of the worst contracts in baseball, especially when you consider that the Giants' best asset at this point is rookie slugger Bryce Eldridge, a first baseman by trade and a designated hitter by necessity right now.
The Giants have signaled that they are open to trading Devers, among others, but no team is going to accept that contract without San Francisco covering a ton of salary or including other, more valuable talent. It's a fiasco entirely self-created by Giants president of baseball operations Buster Posey.
Here's the tragic truth of the Rafael Devers trade: The Red Sox clearly won it. They unloaded an imminently toxic contract and got major talent in the process. You could legitimately argue that Breslow pulled off one of the best deals of the decade, turning a contentious situation into precious financial flexibility.
Yet none of this was done in a vacuum. Breslow executed a coup and then immediately surrendered the spoils to two teams with vastly more competent front offices in a sequence that could end up defining his tenure, from the poor communication with a franchise player to the desperation that forced him to make win-now trades.
The Red Sox currently sit in the AL East basement at 29-40, and the Giants have been even worse, at 29-43 entering Tuesday. The Dodgers and Brewers both lead their divisions by significant margins and control the talent that fell in their lap for at least the next five years.
