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The Boston Red Sox and Washington Nationals kicked off trade deadline season in earnest on Saturday night, when Boston sent left-handed pitcher Connelly Early to the Nats for corner infielder Curtis Mead.

Most consequential trades this time of year involve a contender swapping one or more prospects for an established big leaguer. Not so this one. At the time of the trade, the Red Sox and Nationals were in similar positions in the standings: The Sox were 53-50, seven and a half games out of the division lead, but half a game up in the AL Wild Card race. The Nats were 53-52, eight and a half games out of first place in the NL East, but only two games out of a Wild Card spot. Both teams are playing with house money: Boston on account of being 14 games under .500 less than five weeks ago, and Washington on account of… everything that’s happened since the start of the 2020 season.

And there’s little difference between Early and Mead in terms of age or team control: Mead is 25, and barring substantial changes in the next CBA, he’ll be arbitration-eligible after the 2027 season and under team control through 2030. Early is one year younger and one year behind Mead on the journey to both of those milestones.

Sound the alarm, friends, because what we’ve got here is a bona fide challenge trade.

Last year, the Red Sox gave a cup of coffee to a pair of low-arm-slot left-handed pitching prospects with five-letter last names containing the letters E and L. Payton Tolle is the big one with the mustache; Early is the other guy.

Coming into this season, Tolle was also the better prospect, but Early carries quite a reputation himself. The former fifth-round pick out of Virginia was the no. 38 global prospect on our offseason Top 100, with a 50 Future Value grade.

Early uses that low-three-quarters slot to get big arm-side carry on his four-seam fastball, which sits in the low 90s. Like most starters with six-pitch arsenals, he has one set of tricks for batters on each side of the plate. Lefties get fastballs — both four-seamers and sinkers — whose arm-side movement makes for a piquant contrast with a sweeper that breaks hard in the other direction.

I’d like to call on Austin Wells to demonstrate what a nasty pitch this sweeper is:

Fun fact: That pitch was actually the third sweeper Wells whiffed on in that at-bat alone. It’s nasty work.

It’s a much less extreme version of the Nick Lodolo pitching sideways thing, but lefties have to guard against both fastballs boring in on their hands and that rug-pull sweeper, and it’s tough. The difference in average horizontal movement between Early’s sinker and sweeper is 31.6 inches, which is almost twice the width of home plate.

Righties get fewer sinkers and a mix of curveballs and changeups; the latter mimics the four-seamer’s horizontal movement, but with about 10 mph less velocity and 18 inches more induced vertical break. Early also has a gyro slider that he’ll throw sparingly to any hitter.

The sweeper is the only pitch of Early’s that I’d describe as a real killer, but out of his six offerings, the curveball is the only real dud. Opponents are slugging .613 off Early’s hook this year, though he had much more success with it during his limited action in 2025. Whether he can refine it into something better is an open question; he doesn’t throw anything with an average spin rate outside the low 2,400 rpm range.

But it’s a big arsenal with multiple effective fastballs and weapons for both lefties and righties. Early has a 3.44 ERA in 17 starts this season, and although he’s outpitching his xERA and FIP by a run each (give or take a couple tenths), he could change absolutely nothing about his game and be a solid no. 4 starter for the next eight years. And that’s not his ceiling; Early is only 24 and has less than a full season’s worth of big league reps on his record.

One minor area of concern: Early hasn’t thrown a pitch in the majors in four weeks. He’s been on the IL with elbow inflammation since his start on June 30 — which came against the Nationals, as luck would have it. Mead was one of the last four batters he faced.

Whenever I see “elbow” and “IL” in the same sentence, no matter how minor the injury, my first thought is always to rummage through the cadaver pile to see if there are any spare UCLs available. Obviously, that’s not a rational point of view, but we live in the golden age of elbow injuries, so it’s a hard impulse to kick.

In any event, Early is already throwing in preparation for a return to action, so the Nats should have his services down the stretch.

Whatever Early accomplishes in his career, it’s a near-certainty that he’ll go down as the second-best left-handed pitcher to be traded straight-up for Mead. The 25-year-old infielder was first signed by the Phillies out of Australia in 2018; 18 months later, he was sent to the Rays for minor league swingman Cristopher Sánchez.

For a moment, that trade looked like yet another coup for Tampa Bay, as Mead climbed into the top 50 on both the 2022 and 2023 Top Prospect lists. Suffice it to say that is no longer the case.

As Mead bulked up and slid down the defensive spectrum from second base to third base to first base, he exhibited nothing like the offensive punch required to make up for it. Across the 2024 and 2025 seasons, Mead hit .235/.294/.309, which is a wRC+ of 73. In 396 plate appearances, he posted an ISO of .075 and hit just four home runs. That’s barely going to cut it as a backup catcher, let alone a right-right first baseman.

Red Sox fans are no doubt aware that four months ago, as Early was a top-40 global prospect, Mead couldn’t crack the Opening Day roster for the White Sox. Red Sox Chief Baseball Officer Craig Breslow isn’t exactly the most popular guy in New England, 15-game win streak or no, but even by his standards this is a massive gaffe, right?

Well, a lot has changed in the past four months. Breslow addressed reporters before Sunday’s game, on the topic of the Early-Mead trade. Our David Laurila was in attendance, and passed along the following quote:

“We had a lot of information available to us,” Breslow said. “There was the amount of objective information we had. Some live looks from scouts, scouting reports, talking to the coaches here. And it does seem like there were some meaningful changes to his setup, where he was holding his hands, his bat path, his stride, where he is consistently getting to more damage.”

Mead’s production certainly attests to the “doing more damage” part:

I don’t think Breslow’s trade record is anywhere near as bad as his reputation. But Mead was godawful for three seasons and has only been good for a few months; I wouldn’t blame Sox fans who are reluctant to take Breslow’s word for it that this isn’t a fluke.

So take mine:

In addition to hitting the ball harder, making more in-zone contact, and doubling his walk rate, Mead has also increased his in-air pull rate by half since last year. That, for those of you who are new here, is the batted ball direction that produces home runs. Sure enough, 16 of Mead’s 17 dingers this year are to left or left center.

That makes sense, given the changes he’s made to his stance.

Breslow went on to praise Mead’s approach, saying his contact skills and plate discipline have “always” been there. I don’t know if I’d go that far, but they’re definitely there now, and Breslow’s comments about Mead’s mechanical changes are spot-on.

Baseball Savant’s tracking data has Mead standing closer to the plate and with a more open stance, but you can tell that even without the tracking data. Here’s a plate appearance from last July:

And here’s one from his last visit to Fenway, a little less than four weeks ago:

You can see he’s standing up straighter, his hands are lower, and his bat is more upright. He looks much more comfortable up there. His average bat speed has actually gone down a tick since 2024 and 2025, but he’s accessing it more consistently, and making more contact.

I don’t want to overstate the impact of these changes; Mead is still only two-thirds of a season into his rebirth, and as a corner infielder, he needs to hit a lot to be a star. But I feel comfortable calling him at least a league-average third baseman with some pop. (According to Breslow, the plan is to start Mead at second and leave Caleb Durbin at third base, but that is not how I’d deploy those two.)

Breslow said something else that interested me: “Our goal wasn’t to win the trade. It was to make the team better.”

That is a very, very dangerous statement to make; if this goes south for Boston, “Our goal wasn’t to win the trade” is going to be above the fold in every tabloid from Connecticut to the Canadian border. But I get where Breslow is coming from.

All of a sudden, the Red Sox want to win now. And even with Durbin finally showing signs of life, Boston’s infield is a total mess. With Trevor Story and Marcelo Mayer both on the IL, there is simply far too much Andruw Monasterio in this lineup. At the same time, Boston’s rotation is an area of strength. Even with Garrett Crochet and Tanner Houck out of action long-term, the Red Sox have Sonny Gray, Ranger Suarez, and Tolle at the head of the rotation and plenty of guys after that who can throw five big league innings without precipitating a crisis of public hygiene.

Even if you take a pessimistic view of both Early’s talents and the state of his elbow, the Red Sox will miss him. But they need a competent infielder way more than they need a starting pitcher. And this is a seller’s market for right-handed power bats; young ones with team control all the more so.

I do think it’s fair to wonder if Breslow might’ve been better served aiming higher, if he were willing to part with Early. There were Zach Neto rumors last week, for instance. (Though with Story and Meyer still hurt, and Mead coming in a 1-for-1 trade for a big leaguer, this deal doesn’t preclude Breslow from going shopping again.)

This trade, as Breslow said, indisputably makes the Red Sox better. But, if we investigate the second half of his sentence, the Nationals come out ahead in the trade.

Washington could afford to trade an infielder; CJ Abrams is having a tremendous season, and the Nats have so many undersized second base types they’re playing them at first base and DH. With Mead off the roster, 2021 first-rounder Brady House is getting his third chance, by my count, to stick in the big leagues. So far, it hasn’t gone well, but he only turned 23, so maybe his time is now.

Washington’s pitching staff, on the other hand, is just as messy as Boston’s infield. The Nats got a gift when Foster Griffin came back from Japan and immediately made the All-Star team. Beyond that, though, things are grim. Even with Griffin in the fold, the Nats’ staff is 26th in the league in FIP- and 27th in ERA-.

As much as I’ve been pounding the mid-rotation starter drum for Early this whole post, if he comes back healthy and the Nats make the playoffs, I’d probably slot him in for Game 2 behind Griffin in a hypothetical Wild Card series.

The Red Sox are also under much more pressure to win now. They’re running a $200 million payroll in a market where you win championships or your car gets keyed. The Nationals are on just the wrong side of the Wild Card line in a very crowded race, but they’re also coming out of a long rebuild, with a payroll that’s half of what Boston is spending. Even finishing .500 and giving the Braves and/or Phillies a bloody nose would be a positive for new baseball ops head Paul Toboni in his first full season at the helm.

So if Early comes back and pitches well for the Nats down the stretch, that’s great, even if they ultimately fall short of the playoffs. Even if Early struggles now, he’ll be around as the Nats continue to build in 2027, 2028, and so on.

And Toboni picked Early up for a guy he plucked out of the roster crunch clearance bin in March. Could Mead have stuck around and hit fifth for the Nationals for the next five years? Maybe. But this trade reminds me of (Red Sox fans, skip over the next part) Milwaukee selling high on both Durbin and Isaac Collins last winter. If you strike gold on a post-hype position player without elite tools, it makes sense to sell high, even if it looks like you’re selling too soon.

But with both players under team control into the 2030s, what Mead and Early are now matters less than what they can be molded into over the next few seasons. Stars-for-prospects trades are won and lost by scouts. Challenge trades, like this one, are won and lost by the entire organization. Washington is ahead now, but there’s no guarantee that won’t change.

David Laurila contributed additional reporting to this article.