Details emerge on Red Sox’ failed pursuit of Joe Ryan

The Red Sox were getting Joe Ryan. Until they weren't.

In a cruel trade deadline twist, the MLB Network jumped the gun and erroneously posted that the Sox had landed the Twins ace. Not only did the Red Sox NOT get Ryan, they were "not even close," according to MassLive's Chris Cotillo, who later said his sources on that came from the Minnesota side.

Top insider Ken Rosenthal, meanwhile, described Craig Breslow's pursuit of Ryan as "feeble at best" and the Red Sox' deadline as an "epic fail."

A new report by Jen McCaffrey at The Athletic goes into more detail. Multiple sources with knowledge of the Twins' side of discussions told McCaffrey that "talks fell apart when the Red Sox were unwilling to offer any of their big league outfielders, or an enticing enough package of their top-tier prospects."

McCaffrey reports that outfielder Jhostynxon Garcia was "in the mix" to be sent to the Twins, but the rest of the Red Sox's packages were "not substantial enough" to get a deal done.

^{The Red Sox reportedly came up woefully short in their pursuit of Twins ace Joe Ryan.}

"We’re happy with the guys we brought in, with Steven [Matz] and Dustin [May], but we also pursued real impact players that we felt like could improve our team in '25 and beyond," Breslow said in a post-deadline video conference Thursday night. "We were uncomfortably aggressive in trying to pursue them in the players we were trying to put into deals. Ultimately, it wasn’t from a lack of effort. Other teams needed to say, ‘Hey, that’s enough. That crosses the line.’ It wasn’t about an unwillingness to talk about our full system."

Obviously, Breslow didn't get uncomfortable enough. If he wants to get actually aggressive and make the kind of bold move that any World Series contender has to make in order to push for October success, then he has to get actually uncomfortable. He needs to accept paying a long-term price in order to achieve short-term success, at some point.

Nobody's asking Breslow to trade the whole major-league roster or gut the farm system. But the whole city of Boston knows that he needs to do more than he did on Thursday, if he and the team want to be serious about a real postseason push.