How Close Was Andrew Benintendi To Being Included In White Sox-Red Sox Trade?
(CBS) The blockbuster deal of the baseball offseason came when the White Sox traded ace left-hander Chris Sale to the Red Sox on Dec. 6.
Chicago's return in the deal was four prospects, headlined by second baseman Yoan Moncada and right-hander Michael Kopech. But how close was outfielder Andrew Benintendi, the new consensus top prospect in baseball, to being included in the deal? It was touch and go in Benintendi's eyes.
"My agent texted me and said, 'You're either going to go or not in the next two minutes,'" Benintendi told MassLive.com of that Dec. 6 day. "So I was just like, 'OK, there's not much I can do. So after that two minutes went up, I saw everything on Twitter and people were texting me. It was a big move for both sides."
The White Sox had previously expressed interest in Benintendi leading up to last summer's trade deadline, but the Red Sox waited it out. In the end, Boston wanted no part of parting ways with Benintendi, president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski told NESN.com.
"We were never planning on it," Dombrowski said. "That was not a goal of ours to trade him. We like him a lot.
We never came close to trading him in the wintertime."