Surely, as the Red Sox Baseball Operations staff made and received phone calls and texts throughout the long day at Fenway Wednesday, the irony was not lost.
As Chaim Bloom and Co. work toward Friday's trade deadline, striving to improve the major league roster for the final two months of the regular season and beyond, they undoubtedly were being asked about the availability of nearly every prospect in their minor league system.
At the same time, the Red Sox were rebounding from a 4-1 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays by posting a 4-1 victory in the nightcap, largely on the strength of a couple of recent graduates from that very same minor league system.
On the mound, Tanner Houck was carving up the Toronto lineup, recording seven strikeouts while allowing just one run in four innings. Meanwhile, outfielder Jarren Duran, who had knocked in the team's second run with a sacrifice fly in the second, then accounting for two more runs in the fourth when he tripled home one run, then scored on his own thanks to a bobble in center field.
As Duran raced around the bases in a blur, Fenway became energized, with fans marveling at the rookie's long, powerful strides and his almost unmatched speed.
Only two weeks ago, Houck and Duran were playing for Triple-A Worcester. Houck had already had a taste of the big leagues, having made three starts in a September audition last fall, then contributing a couple of spot starts earlier this season. Duran, whom fans had been clamoring for since April, finally arrived for the start of the second half.
And then, there they were Wednesday night, with about a dozen games of major league experience between them, driving the Red Sox to an important win in the middle of the pennant race.
It's precisely this sort of matriculation that Bloom seeks on a consistent basis from the farm system, the better to achieve the word that stands as both his end-game and mantra: sustainability. The only way to achieve it, as Bloom has explained countless times, is to have a steady flow of homegrown (and by extension, inexpensive) talent from within. If an organization can't replenish or supplement its major league roster internally on a consistent basis, it's doomed to overpay in the free-agent market to fill its needs.
That's how the Red Sox have fallen into this first-to-last-to-first again pattern over the last decade.
Naturally, not every touted prospect is going to have an immediate impact, or even one as dramatic as Houck and Duran provided Wednesday at Fenway. Some will stall out after some initial success, as Bobby Dalbec is currently discovering. Some will exhibit inconsistent performance before getting established. And some will be outright busts.
For all the scouting and analytics at works, player development remains a highly inexact science.
But when an organization does its job correctly for a number of years -- as the Los Angeles Dodgers have done -- it can lead to a long stretch in which the World Series is within reach nearly every year. In the tiniest of windows at Fenway Wednesday, the Sox got that reminder again.
"I know a lot of people thought we were thin, organizational-wise,'' said Alex Cora. "When you're successful, the way this organization was for three years (2016-2018), of course you're going to be thin at the upper levels. But all these kids, they were part of the organization a few years ago. You have to be patient. They were in the lower levels and they were developing. But they're really good. Now, they've graduated and they're performing at the level that we hoped for a few years ago. You just have to be patient.''
Being patient can be difficult in Boston, where fans' expectations are driven by recent success and size of payroll. Some, undoubtedly, would sacrifice almost any piece of the system for a shot at Max Scherzer or Anthony Rizzo, and not think twice. Immediate gratification is a powerful sentiment.
Bloom, of course, knows better. He understands that you can't keep dealing away the best homegrown players for short-term gain, and in the unlikely event he doesn't, he can connect with the current top executive of the Philadelphia Phillies for a refresher course. Dave Dombrowski mortgaged the Red Sox future for the 2018 title and less than two years later was unceremoniously shown the door by Red Sox ownership.
Patience is indeed a virtue. And the Red Sox win Wednesday night, in the middle of a pennant race, was more evidence of that, too, even as Bloom decides just how patient he can afford to be between now and 4 p.m. Friday afternoon.