Eugenio Suarez is headed back to the Mariners, removing deadline season’s biggest bat from the market. Several other clubs besides Seattle were known to be interested in Suarez’s services, but The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal and Jen McCaffrey add a somewhat surprising team to the mix in the aftermath of the tonight’s trade. The Red Sox had some talks with the Diamondbacks about Suarez with the idea of using Suarez not at his customary third base position, but across the diamond at first base.
Suarez has made exactly one career appearance as a first baseman, which came just earlier this week in Arizona’s 1-0 win over the Pirates on July 24. Suarez moved from third to first in the bottom of the tenth inning amidst some other defensive changes for the D’Backs, so we can probably rule this out as some kind of unofficial audition for any Red Sox scouts that might’ve been in attendance.
Public defensive statistics have been mixed on Suarez’s third base glovework over his career. The Defensive Runs Saved metric has been giving him negative grades in each of the last seven seasons, while the Outs Above Average metric has him at a +9 OAA over that same timespan. In 2025, Suarez has been getting a thumbs down across the board, with -5 OAA and -4 DRS over 877 2/3 innings at the hot corner. The 34-year-old’s defensive future could be an interesting subplot to his free agent market this winter, as it remains to be seen if Suarez will want to remain at third base or perhaps consider a position change.
The Rafael Devers parallels are hard to ignore. Devers’ refusal to play first base (after being more or less forced from his old third base job into a DH-only role) in the wake of Triston Casas’ injury in early May hastened the chain of events that led to the shocking trade that went Devers from the Red Sox to the Giants in June. It is hard to imagine that the Sox would’ve explored a trade of this magnitude without first getting some okay from Suarez’s camp that he was fine with changing positions, given how the Devers situation went south in such a public manner.
As Moneyball fans can tell you, learning to play first base is incredibly hard. It may have been a lot to ask for Suarez to pick up essentially a new position mid-season, while on a new team and in the pressure of a pennant race. The Red Sox might not have minded subpar glovework if Suarez continued slugging home runs, yet there have been plenty of past examples of players whose hitting suffered due to a preoccupation with defense.
Abraham Toro and especially Romy Gonzalez have hit well in splitting the bulk of first base duties since Casas’ injury, so even this relative weak link position has still been pretty solid. The rest of Boston’s lineup has also been so productive that the Sox can likely get away without having a big first base bat, though the club may yet be considering an upgrade for the position at the deadline. Most recent reporting on the Sox has focused on their search for pitching, though the team is known to have interest in Yandy Diaz or Brandon Lowe if the Rays decide to sell at a larger scale.
