Buy or sell at the deadline? Red Sox reportedly looking to do both

BOSTON -- The MLB trade deadline is just one week away, and the Red Sox reportedly still have not picked which lane they'll take. According to a two new reports on Tuesday, the Boston front office will once again try to do a little bit of buying and a little bit of selling at the deadline.

According to ESPN MLB Insider Jeff Passan , the Red Sox brass still isn't sure which direction to go at the deadline. So Craig Breslow and company are looking to travel in both lanes and will attempt to be both buyers and sellers at the July 30 deadline.

"There are dueling thoughts within the organization that run into direct conflict with one another," Passan wrote Tuesday. "On one hand, the Red Sox have overachieved, so pushing some chips into the middle would reward a group that warrants such. On the other, they'll soon transition to a younger core, with Marcelo Mayer, Roman Anthony, Kyle Teel and Kristian Campbell all almost big league-ready, and in the AL East, it pays to have one eye as much on the future as the other is on the present.

"The Red Sox will be busy. They just might be the sort to nibble on the margins both ways," Passan added.

Nibbles aren't going to cut it for a fanbase hungry for their first taste of playoff baseball since 2021. And neither will selling off players from a team fighting for a playoff spot.

But according to Alex Speier in of The Boston Globe , the Red Sox "haven't ruled out the possibility of dealing away high-end rental players such as Kenley Jansen, Nick Pivetta, or Tyler O'Neill."

That isn't going to sit very well with Red Sox fans, since that approach backfired when Chaim Bloom attempted to dabble in both at the 2022 deadline. The Red Sox were more pretenders than contenders at that point in the season, but Bloom brought in low-impact veterans like Eric Hosmer and Tommy Pham at the deadline. He also traded away catcher Christian Vazquez, and while he got Wilyer Abreu in that move, it essentially waved the white flag for Boston.

His acquisitions did not fire up the guys inside the clubhouse, and the team collapsed a short time later. Bloom's biggest error that season was not trading away guys like Xander Bogaerts, J.D. Martinez, and Nathan Eovaldi, which would have gone a long way in resetting the books and building up the system. It would have indicated that the Red Sox were punting on the rest of 2022, but at least the team would have picked a lane.

As for this year's deadline, the team showed Breslow that they're worth investing in with a strong finish ahead of the All-Star break. Their current four-game losing streak shows that they do need some help though, mostly by way of a starting pitcher and some reinforcements for the bullpen . The team could also use a right-handed bat that can hit lefty pitching.

Maybe Breslow can compromise and get the best out of both worlds as a buyer and a seller. But that's a difficult lane to travel, and one that could easily lead to another post-deadline collapse by the Red Sox.