McAdam: Dombrowski believes Red Sox minor league system has what it takes to pull off deadline deals

MINNEAPOLIS -- The non-waiver trade deadline is still nearly six weeks away, but that's only if you're going by the traditional baseball calendar. When the Kansas City Royals shipped reliever Kelvin Herrera to the Washington Nationals on Monday night, it was a signal to many in the game that trading season was already unofficially underway.

In exchange for Herrera, a closer headed for free agency this off-season, the Royals obtained a package of three prospects from the Nationals, once again highlighting the idea that teams with a good-sized inventory of prospects are best positioned to make mid-season deals and improve themselves for the second half and beyond.

And that, in turn, begs the question: are the Red Sox such a team? That is, do they have enough prospect capital to become players in the competitive June-July trade market?

At first glance, the answer would seem to be: no. The Sox have graduated everyday players to the big leagues in each of the last two seasons (Andrew Benintendi in 2016; Rafael Devers in 2017), neither of whom is older than 23. They've dealt off a dozen or so prospects in the last three seasons to obtain pitchers Chris Sale, Craig Kimbrel, Drew Pomeranz and Tyler Thornburg.

And compounding things is the fact that the team's top pitching prospect and top position player prospect are shelved — Jay Groome underwent Tommy John surgery last month and Michael Chavis is serving an 80-game PED suspension — further depleting the team's stock.

Still, president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski remains upbeat that he can accomplish what he wants with what he has in his minor league system.

"There's no question we do, yes'' Dombrowski said.

That may fly in the face of others evaluations of the Red Sox' system. ESPN's Keith Law ranked them 24th; MinorLeagueBall.com had them 25th; Baseball America also had them ranked in the bottom third of all organizations.

Additionally, Groome and Chavis were the only two prospects to crack many Top 100 prospects at the start of the year, and, as noted, are off the table because of their respective circumstances.

And it's not as if the Red Sox lack some tradeable commodities. Lefty Jalen Beeks, who was rocked in his only major league start earlier this month, has nevertheless opened eyes at Pawtucket with his ability to miss bats. Portland first baseman Josh Ockimey has shown raw power at Double A. And the organization has a number of valued arms -- mostly at Single-A -- that entice teams looking to make deals.

"They don't have much at the upper levels (of their system),'' said an evaluator who has seen quite a bit of the Red Sox' system. "And they don't have that one, really 'can't-miss' guy that they could use to blow another team away. But it's not like they're without prospects. Most of their (best) guys are at Single-A and if they put a few of those together...''

"I've had enough conversations, just preliminarily, that I know we have players of interest for other clubs,'' Dombrowski said. "I'm not saying what we will or will not do, but clubs have called and have interest in a lot of our guys, sure.''

What seems obvious, however, is that the Red Sox lack the sort of elite prospects they could use to acquire any of the big stars expected to be auctioned off. For instance, it would appear that they don't have the talent to bid on, say, Baltimore infielder Manny Machado, although The Athletic's Ken Rosenthal reported earlier this week that the Sox inquired about Machado and the Orioles' asking price.

In another sense, the Red Sox really aren't in a different situation than they were a year ago when Dombrowski was under orders to hold onto the organization's top prospects, but still managed to acquire Eduardo Nunez and Addison Reed, two useful pieces for the 2017 Red Sox' stretch drive.

And importantly, talent evaluation is in the eye of the beholder. Many in the industry were surprised that the Royals didn't get more for Herrera, a dominant reliever with a history of post-season success. The two best players in the deal -- outfielder Blake Perkins and pitcher Kelvin Gutierrez -- were ranked anywhere from the 9th to 12th best prospects in the Nationals' organization. In some better organizations -- the Nationals' system is generally considered middle-of-the-pack -- they would have been ranked lower; in others, they would have graded out higher.

"I don't know what we're going to do at this point in time,'' said Dombrowski. "But I just would say that when clubs talk, we have enough players of interest and I don't feel (making a deal to improve the team) would be difficult to do.''