It doesn’t sound like the Red Sox will be adding much — if anything — at the trade deadline

BOSTON — With less than two weeks until the MLB trade deadline, the Red Sox look like a team that could use some help to make a playoff push over the final months of the season. Boston is on the outside of the postseason picture at the moment, sitting 2.5 games out of a Wild Card spot in the American League, but they remain in the mix.

“The best thing about what has happened is that it has happened in the large part because the progress of our core players. Whether that is our young players on the position player side, pitching side, or some of the veterans we have acquired, you’re starting to see that core really come together. That is the way we want to win because that is something you can sustain and build on,” Chief Baseball Officer Chaim Bloom said Wednesday while checking out some of his prospects in Portland, Maine. “Ultimately, we are trying to build a group that can compete for a championship now and every year. We’re going to do everything that gets us towards that.”   

But just because the team is in the hunt for October doesn’t mean the front office is going to do something ahead of Aug. 1 to push the Red Sox over the edge. With several players on the IL, the fear among many fans has been that the team will see the potential return of those injured players as “deadline pickups.” 

Enter Red Sox president Sam Kennedy, who basically said that the team is viewing the potential returns of Garrett Whitlock, Tanner Houck, Chris Sale, and Trevor Story as in-season acquisitions during his Thursday morning appearance on WEEI. In his eyes, getting healthy is more important than picking up additional talent at the deadline.

“I don’t think you want to make a trade at the trade deadline just to make a trade,” Kennedy told The Greg Hill Show. “I think you want to make a deal to bolster what you have if you need to, if you have holes, which, really interesting as we come into this trade deadline. We’re right in the mix here. We’re 51-46. Think we’re two or three games out of a wild card spot. Obviously not where we want to be, but recognizing we’ve got 40 percent of the schedule remaining.

“We’ve got the potential post-trade deadline for three impact starters to come back hopefully in the month of August with Whit and Tanner and Chris Sale and then, fingers crossed, but we might have Trevor Story coming back sooner than later, an impact arm in the bullpen in John Schreiber. So, frankly, it’s much more important that we get those guys back healthy and contributing, because I think if they had been healthy over the balance of the season, we probably wouldn’t be a couple games out of the wild card,” he said. “I think we’d be firmly ensconced in a playoff position.”

While getting injured players back could help, there is also no way to predict if Story will be as effective at the plate after he missed nearly a year of action. And when it comes to the starting rotation, Whitlock, Houck, and Sale all struggled for stretches when they were healthy. Relying on them to come back strong and carry the team to the playoffs is a risky proposition.

 Adding another starting pitcher to the mix would certainly be welcomed by manager Alex Cora, who has had to rely on just three healthy starters for the last few weeks. And the Red Sox are working with a lot of outfield depth at the moment, so it’d be worth looking into moving an outfielder for a pitcher, which would in turn allow the red hot Jarren Duran to play every day.

The Red Sox didn’t do themselves any favors in their playoff push this week, dropping two of three to the last-place Oakland Athletics. After a very strong stretch that saw the Red Sox win nine of their 11 games, they went out and lost a series to the worst team in baseball.

Losing to bad teams was a calling card of the Sox earlier this season, and part of the reason they’ve spent a large portion of the season in last place in the AL East. Yet they remain in striking distance of a playoff spot, and the right move around deadline time could be the difference between making the playoffs and spending a second straight October at home.