Count Xander Bogaerts among the people who aren’t certain why the Red Sox traded Christian Vázquez to the Astros on Monday, a day prior to the trade deadline.
Chaim Bloom sent the Red Sox’s longtime catcher to Houston in exchange for a pair of prospects — Baseball America’s No. 12 prospect in Houston’s system Enmanuel Valdez and No. 21 Wilson Abreyu — on Monday as he started the odd process of trying to both buy and sell at the trade deadline.
Valdez and Abreyu could offer good value down the road, but for Bogaerts — who was good friends with Vázquez and was the first person Vázquez approached when he found out about the trade — the loss of a starting catcher with big-game chops was a head-scratcher.