A trio of Red Sox officials — including assistant GM Eddie Romero, who’d been in charge of Moncada’s signing process — sat with Moncada, who was also joined by David and Jo Hastings, who serve both as Moncada’s agents and, informally, as surrogate parents for him in the States.

On Sunday, Dec. 4, Yoan Moncada arrived at the Major League Baseball Winter Meetings for an awards banquet where he would be recognized as the Baseball America Minor League Player of the Year.

David Hastings passed Moncada cue cards to help him deliver a brief thank you for the award in English, mindful that Moncada had frozen when trying to deliver brief remarks in English while accepting another award 11 months earlier in Boston. As Moncada prepared to accept his award, he left the cue cards behind.


“I got this,” he told the Hastings, before thanking Baseball America and the Red Sox organization in remarks he’d rehearsed several times in the preceding days.

When Moncada returned to the table, he was beaming with a sense of accomplishment following what would prove his final official act as a Red Sox. He was unaware that talks were already underway that would soon ship him out of the organization as the centerpiece of a deal that brought Chris Sale to Boston.

While making the deal that sent Moncada, Michael Kopech, Luis Alexander Basabe, and Victor Diaz was a tense, restless time for the principals involved in the deal, for the players, it represented a less certain exercise, and one of greater upheaval.

After all, the players had no control over their unfolding futures, leaving them as spectators to the drama. Moreover, when the dust settles, the front office members will go back to familiar homes and offices. The players must contemplate life in new, unfamiliar cities, with new, unfamiliar teammates and radically different circumstances.


The days surrounding a trade represent a time of chaos and change — sometimes dismaying, sometimes exhilarating — in the lives of the players who change clubs. That is particularly true for prospects who have not yet been subjected to the realities of baseball as a business, and who have spent all of their time in professional baseball daydreaming of a future with the team with which they signed their first contracts.

“He was told, ‘We think you’re going to be the face of the franchise. You’re going to have a long career with Boston.’ To have this happen, it’s shocking,” said Hastings. “We had heard that there were rumors. Nothing came out of Boston. It was just rumors that they were interested in Sale and Yoan might be included in the deal.

“All we did was, we went to Yoan and told him about the rumor, and we also told him that whatever happens, baseball is a business, and probably in his career, he’s going to be traded. If it happens, it’s not about him, don’t take this personally.

“I didn’t believe what I was saying, that there was any possibility that he’d be traded, but I took the opportunity to calm him down because he’d heard it. He was like, ‘Why would they do this? Why are they talking about this?’ At least we had the opportunity to soften the blow when it finally came down.”


Kopech, meanwhile, was at a workout facility in East Texas as rumors of a trade to the White Sox started to intensify last Tuesday. He stepped into a cryotherapy room for three minutes at the conclusion of the workout. He stepped out of that room into a new professional life.

“All of my buddies were standing there and smiling at me. I asked them what was going on, and they told me I’d been traded,” said Kopech. “The first we heard about it was through Twitter. Then my girlfriend called me not even 20 seconds after I found out. I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, hold on a second.’ I hung up on her. I felt kind of bad about that, but I was trying to figure out everything that was going on. I actually didn’t get a call that everything had been finalized for a few hours.”

The gap between the agreement and the finalization of the deal required a review of medical records, which in turn left the players swimming in their thoughts. Kopech, for instance, drove aimlessly for hours.

“I spent all day driving just thinking about stuff. That’s pretty much what there is to do in East Texas: Look at everything, ponder your thoughts,” said Kopech. “It took a little while to set in. I don’t know if it’s completely set in, to be honest with you. I’ve still got Red Sox gear laying all around the house. The head spins. But it is exciting to know that they traded that caliber of a pitcher for the guys we had in our farm system. It says a lot about the talent we had over there. I think we all take pride in that.”


As for that pitcher himself? Sale’s view was understandably a bit different.

He’d spent years in the rumor mill — a form of “monkey in the middle,” the pitcher said in a conference call last Wednesday — and so there was a mixture of relief and excitement about clarity with his previously unresolved future.

Sale’s agent, B.B. Abbott, had been kept apprised of developments by White Sox general manager Rick Hahn, both during past seasons and throughout the offseason. He was slated to fly to the meetings on Monday, but weather held his flight back until Tuesday. The likelihood of a deal was changing along with his flight times.

“I thought last week that the percentages [of a deal] were probably less than 50/50. I think that as the week continued on I thought it was probably 50/50 and by the time I landed I thought it probably was 80/20,” said Abbott, whose flight from Florida was around 7 a.m., with a landing in Washington at 9 a.m. “I think that on Monday they got some momentum and they agreed to a guy to center this, around of a group of players to center around, and Rick was pretty forthright with that was what they were looking for.”


Sale had been genuine in his stated desire to be with the White Sox – but he also recognized that Chicago was gearing up for a rebuild. As a pitcher who has never pitched in the postseason, Sale relished the thought of delivering meaningful innings in October while still in his prime.

And so, the notion that greeted Abbott and Sale on Tuesday morning prior to the agent’s flight – that the pitcher was likely to be dealt soon, whether to the Red Sox or Nationals – was “bittersweet” but exciting. Sale recognized what the White Sox had meant to him personally, but he also was eager to add a new October chapter to his baseball career.

Around midday, Abbott received word that it did indeed look like Sale would head to the Red Sox. He immediately reached out to Sale, who was driving to Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers for a workout.

“In Chris’s own way, he said wow,” Abbott chuckled of a two-word phrase that bridged the divide between the sacred and profane, an eruption of delight at the notion that he’d be with a team that has unapologetic World Series ambitions — and that spends spring training in Fort Myers, just up the road from his offseason home in Naples.

John Farrell connected with his new pitcher shortly after Abbott.

“He was elated in a pure way,” said the Red Sox manager. “He said it was just like he got called up to the big leagues again.”

For Kopech and Moncada, meanwhile, the development altered their view of the team with whom they will get the summons to the big leagues — a possibility that will take time to process.

“It is what it is. We’re going to make the best of the situation. Yoan is in the right frame of mind. He’s looking forward to meeting everybody, getting out there, and getting going,” said Hastings. “It can be a positive. I think it will be a positive.”

Follow Alex Speier on Twitter at @alexspeier.