Red Sox’s Alex Bregman miss could quickly close exclusive Mariners’ trade window

There’s a certain kind of baseball “quiet” that tells you everything. Not the usual normal offseason lull. But for Seattle, there’s this kind of Dipoto quiet. Where you can almost hear the Mariners doing the math in the background, and trying to talk themselves into waiting the market out.

Then something like Alex Bregman landing with the Cubs happens, and suddenly waiting stops being “patient” and immediately becomes expensive. 

Boston missing on Bregman isn’t just Boston news. It’s a market signal for everyone else: the Red Sox were chasing impact infield help, and now they’ve got one less option. That usually means the next call is a trade call, and we already know Brendan Donovan has been on their radar. 

A Red Sox pivot could turn the Mariners’ Donovan chase into a race

The Donovan “window” only feels exclusive if you’re acting like you’re the only team bold enough to climb through it. The second a big-market club gets shoved toward the trade market, exclusivity turns into a bidding war which is not an ideal scenario for Seattle.

The Red Sox are built for that kind of chaos right now. The Boston Globe has been pretty blunt about how aggressively Craig Breslow operates on the trade front. 

You could find your way around it and say, “Relax, Boston’s priority is probably Bo Bichette.” Maybe! But there’s even more smoke there, and the Phillies have been closely tied to Bichette too. The bigger problem with leaning on that logic is that the Red Sox don’t have to pick just one lane. If they miss on one target, they can snap right to the next without blinking. Donovan is exactly the kind of player front offices love when the flashier plan falls through. 

Jeff Passan also dropped the kind of note that should make Seattle stop pretending this is a controlled negotiation: the Giants are aggressively pursuing a second baseman and have been engaged with the Cubs on Nico Hoerner and the Cardinals on Brendan Donovan. 

Boston pressure is one thing. San Francisco pressure is another, because it’s direct competition in the exact lane Seattle wants to drive in. And it gives St. Louis and Chaim Bloom the easiest leverage line in the world.

That’s where Seattle’s timing matters. They don’t need to “win” the Donovan discourse again. They need to end it.

If you’re Jerry Dipoto, you’re no longer window shopping. You make the call that changes the temperature. You make the kind of offer that stops the polite interest and forces a real yes-or-no. And Bloom will have the final say there  — which is why this is the moment to test his price tag, not admire it.

That’s how you wake up one morning, refresh your feed, and realize the trade window didn’t close slowly. It was slammed shut.