Red Sox might trade $3.5 million All-Star to Phillies, per ESPN insider

The Philadelphia Phillies might be one outfielder away from National League domination.

With a 47-31 record, the Phillies have leapfrogged the slumping New York Mets and hold a 1 1/2-game lead in the NL East as of Tuesday afternoon. It's going to be a tight race, though, and the Phillies should take advantage of every opportunity to improve their club by the Jul. 31 trade deadline.

Would a Boston Red Sox outfielder who finished top-ten in Most Valuable Player voting last season move the needle? Let's discuss.

On Tuesday, ESPN insiders Jeff Passan and Kiley McDaniel named the Red Sox's Jarren Duran as the number-two trade chip based on impact at the upcoming deadline. Duran, who makes just $3.5 million this season, is under team control through 2028.

Passan and McDaniel then assigned Duran a 25 percent chance of getting traded, which isn't nothing, and named the Phillies among a group of six prospective suitors.

"Duran had a huge breakout season in 2024, posting the seventh-best WAR in the majors at 6.7. He overperformed his underlying metrics, though -- i.e., had some lucky outcomes -- and those metrics have regressed a bit this year," the insiders wrote.

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"Now he's underperforming them -- he has been unlucky -- so his true talent is somewhere south of that star-level 6.7 figure but better than the roughly 2 WAR (commensurate with a solid regular) he's on pace for this season."

Duran is about a league-average hitter so far this season, and his defense has taken a big step back in left field. He seemed more comfortable in center field last season, though, where he'd likely be playing in Philadelphia. He posted 17 defensive runs saved across 105 games in center.

The issue, of course, is that Boston and Philadelphia would need to come together on a return package. Boston wants something commensurate with the player Duran was last season, but Philadelphia would want to pay whatever the 28-year-old is worth based on what he's showing now.

But Boston has an outfield logjam, and Phillies president of baseball Dave Dombrowski is motivated to field a championship team, so it certainly can't be ruled out as a possibility.

More MLB: Dodgers linked to reunion with Red Sox's $21 million starter by MLB insiders