Red Sox just gifted the Yankees a golden trade opportunity with Ranger Suárez deal

After months of uncertainty regarding how far the Red Sox would go to build their rotation — "Sonny Gray ... bad No. 2. But is he the No. 2? What number is he?" — it seems as if they must finally be satisfied with going 10 deep (and offering up Payton Tolle/Connelly Early for some offensive upgrade to be named later).

Ranger Suárez became Boston's surprising pivot on Wednesday after they misread Alex Bregman's market and believed they had the highest bid. It's a five-year, $130 million deal for Suárez, who comes armed with playoff moxie and a declining fastball. "Blow you away" move? Not quite, but it certainly makes the Red Sox's rotation the hard-to-dispute best in the AL East. Suárez, Gray, Garrett Crochet, Brayan Bello, Johan Oviedo, Kutter Crawford, Patrick Sandoval, and Early/Tolle/Kyle Harrison at Triple-A gives them the amount of options necessary to cover for a flameout or two.

And while Suárez brings competence/calm, it did still feel like there was a more frightening rotation move on the table for Boston if they were in the upgrading business. They were connected to Yankees target Freddy Peralta, but ... we mean the man their fans wishcasted in navy-and-red all the way back to the trade deadline.

That's Joe Ryan, the Twins right-hander who was erroneously reported to be joining the Sox back in July. He was recently scratched from the TwinsFest lineup just as it began to bubble out that Craig Breslow was looking at No. 1s and No. 2s again instead of feeding the Bregman money to a bat.

Even if he's not going to be a Red Sox (he's not, right?), there's something going on with Ryan. And, with the Ryan Weathers addition creating a little pitching surplus in the Bronx, the Yankees probably have to figure out what, exactly, it is.

What's going on with Joe Ryan? And can the Yankees trade for him?

The price for non-rental starting pitchers has been absurdly high this offseason ... but that hasn't stopped the price for Peralta's singular season of control from rising proportionally, too. Ryan, under control for two more seasons, has evolved beyond the "tantalizing stuff" displayed by the likes of Weathers and Shane Baz. He's a longer-term play and he's an All-Star level righty flirting with the elite tier. He's going to cost a four-prospect package, and it's going to have to hurt.

Are the Yankees willing to swim in these waters after the Red Sox opened the door for them? And is there anything New York can do to make the Twins relent?

"Making the Twins relent" is really the only thing the Yankees have been consistently good at for the past two decades. Maybe there's an avenue here.