Look at the standings and tell me Brian Cashman isn’t waking up with a cold sweat this morning. It is one thing to lose a trade. It is another thing entirely to watch the crown jewel of that failure get shipped directly to Fenway Park to haunt you for the next decade.
Monday’s six-player blockbuster between the Brewers and Red Sox should be a wake-up call for the Bronx. Milwaukee decided to leverage Caleb Durbin’s impressive rookie season and flipped him to Boston. The same Durbin who was the centerpiece of the Devin Williams disaster just a year ago. Remember that? The Yankees sent Nestor Cortes and Durbin to the Brew Crew thinking they were buying a lockdown ninth inning.
Instead, they bought a nightmare. Williams stumbled through 2025 with a bloated 4.79 ERA and a negative WAR before fleeing to the Mets on a three-year deal this winter. The Yankees got 62 innings of stress and a 4-6 record for their trouble. Meanwhile, Durbin wasn’t just existing in Milwaukee; he was thriving. He wrapped up his rookie campaign with a 105 wRC+ and 2.6 fWAR. He swiped 18 bags and hit 11 homers. He finished third in the NL Rookie of the Year voting.
The Cost Of Impatience
Now the Red Sox own that production. Boston needed a right-handed bat for the hot corner and they just stole one from under our noses. They sent Kyle Harrison and David Hamilton to Milwaukee to get it done. The Red Sox also snagged Andruw Monasterio and Anthony Seigler, another former member of the Yankees, in the wash.
Harrison is a fine lefty, sure. He posted a 4.04 ERA last year and might stabilize a Brewers rotation that always seems to be duct-taped together. But the Red Sox are the ones laughing today. They got a 25-year-old infielder with elite contact skills and 30-steal potential who already knows how to handle big-league pitching. Watching Durbin spray doubles off the Green Monster is going to be a special kind of hell for Yankees fans who remember him tearing up Somerset.
A Division Rival Rejuvenated
The optics here are just plain ugly. Cashman traded Durbin to get Williams, and now Williams is across town in Flushing while Durbin is wearing the Red Sox home whites. Milwaukee basically used Durbin as a high-yield savings account for a year before cashing him in for a starting pitcher they desperately needed.
Boston is betting on Durbin’s .256 average and .334 on-base percentage to play up in their hitter-friendly park. They even secured a competitive balance pick in the deal. That is 67th overall for those counting at home. It is a clinical execution of a trade by the Red Sox front office. They saw a need at third base and filled it with a kid the Yankees let slip through their fingers for a rental reliever who couldn’t find the strike zone. To be fair, the Williams trade didn’t look bad when it went through, but the results just weren’t there on his part.
Durbin was never supposed to be the one that got away. He was a throw-in from the Braves years ago who worked his way into being a legitimate prospect, in large part because of his talent but also thanks to the Yankees’ player development and coaching staff. Now he is the starting third baseman for the enemy. If he hits .280 and steals 30 bases in Boston this summer, the Williams trade will be an even worse memory.
More about:New York Yankees
