Both the Yankees and Red Sox stayed nearly silent at the MLB trade deadline Wednesday, but their reasoning for doing so differed.

The Indians, Athletics and Rays — the three teams ahead of the Red Sox in the wild-card standings — all made moves at the deadline, but they were all operating with something Boston lacked: quality prospects.

The Red Sox inquired about several relievers, a major area of concern, but were told that sellers liked prospects from other clubs more than theirs, according to MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand. Boston’s farm system is rated as one of the worst, if not the worst, in the majors. The Yankees, on the other hand, have multiple prospects in Deivi Garcia, Clarke Schmidt and Clint Frazier that teams had interest in, but the Yankees thought it too steep a price to pay.

The only way the Red Sox were going to get a deal done, according to Feinsand, was “to do something stupid” and severely overpay for bullpen help. If the Red Sox, who are 10 games behind the Yankees in the AL East and 2½ games out of the wild card as of Thursday afternoon, were closer to contending, president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski would’ve been more willing to pull that trigger.

“I think if we were closer to first place, I would have been more open-minded to some of the other things,” Dombrowski told reporters Wednesday. “When I say that, the club here needs to play better on a consistent basis. That’s the way I look at it. We like our club, we’ve liked our club all year long. We’re sitting, what, 10 games above .500.

“There’s a lot of great things about it. We had a great week last week, but we still need to do it on a more consistent basis and we haven’t reached that point to give up a premium young player for a guy that was going to fill a certain hold for us [with] where we are right now.”

The Red Sox have the 12th-worst bullpen ERA (4.53) in the majors and the sixth-most blown saves (19), but opted not to add any help. Still, both Dombrowski and manager Alex Cora expressed confidence in their bullpen. They named Darwinzon Hernandez, Nathan Eovaldi and Ryan Brasier as arms they will rely on during their postseason push. As far as closing games, that is Brandon Workman’s domain.

“We feel comfortable giving [Workman] the ball in the ninth inning with a one-run lead,” Dombrowski said. “Not only with his stuff, but his makeup.”