Red Sox Insider Pours Cold Water On Intriguing Trade Rumors originally appeared on NESN. Add NESN as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

The MLB Trade Deadline is still over two months away, but the Boston Red Sox are already aggressively reaching out to other teams, according to Craig Breslow.

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Breslow has acknowledged that making a deal at this stage of the season is difficult, however, as most teams are still in the playoff race and haven’t committed to selling yet. That’s especially true in the American League, where only four teams have a winning record entering play on Friday.

Accordingly, there will likely be more buyers than sellers at the deadline this year, increasing competition and driving up asking prices for whoever is available. It’s also notoriously harder to acquire hitters in-season rather than pitchers, which is bad news for a Red Sox team that’s desperate for offense.

As such, MassLive’s Chris Cotillo doesn’t expect Boston to make a big splash in the trade market soon.

“The likelihood that something gets done now when no team is really selling, to me, is pretty low,” Cotillo said on Thursday’s episode of the “Monster Territory” podcast. “It’s good in theory, we’re trying, we’re trying, we’re trying. But at the end of the day, there’s not a lot of teams that are out of it, and there’s not a lot of teams that have already declared that they’re selling… Those decisions aren’t going to be made until the AllStar Break, which we’re six-plus weeks away from.”

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Breslow did make an early splash last year by trading Rafael Devers in mid-June, so anything’s possible. However, the Red Sox will likely have to rely on internal reinforcements for the time being until teams start to separate in the standings.

Fortunately, they have Garrett Crochet and potentially Roman Anthony coming back from the injured list soon, which should give them a boost as they try to put their slow start behind them.

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