Bowden: Sox not eager to deal Beckett

Former MLB general manager and current ESPN MLB analyst Jim Bowden appeared on the Dennis and Callahan show Tuesday morning to share his thoughts as the trade deadline looms at 4 p.m.

Bowden, a Boston native who served as a general manager for the Reds from 1992 to 2003 and the Nationals from 2004 to 2009, said from his recent conversations with Red Sox general manager Ben Cherington, he hasn’t got the sense that the first-year GM is eager to trade struggling pitcher Josh Beckett.

“I didn’t get the sense he was eager to deal him,” Bowden said of Cherington. “I think that the Red Sox are pretty cerebral looking at he’s 32 years old. I don’t think they think he’s in decline just because his strikeout ratio is the lowest of his career at 6.8 per nine [innings]. They’d like to get him straightened out and have a good second half.

“From what I understand, and I’ve talked to most every GM in the game in the last 24 hours, Beckett’s going to be a Boston Red Sox tomorrow morning.”

Bowden said that if the Red Sox make a deal or two on Tuesday, he anticipates them to be smaller deals that would help the team get younger.

“[Cherington] has had a plan the whole time and I think he’s carried it out very well,” Bowden said. “They did not expect to make any major deals, but I do think they’re trying to do some smaller stuff today and of course, this is unfamiliar territory for them to be so far back, so they’ve gone with a very measured approach here.

“A Kelly Shoppach deal today, to a team like the Washington Nationals, it’s very likely that something like that gets done, but Boston’s not going to go out and get what they need, which is a starting pitcher, a top-of-the-rotation starter.”

Bowden added that Cherington isn’t taking this job in on his own, and that the majority of the front office is collectively working together to help Cherington make the right moves.

“Everybody that wants to think that it’s a GM on his own, I mean Theo [Epstein] wasn’t on his own. It’s an organization where everybody’s involved,” Bowden said, “and like any corporation, you have owners, CEO, president, GM, managers and bottom line, they try to do it together.

“Look, if Ben wanted to make a trade for starting pitching, and if it was a significant guy, ownership would have approved it. [Manager Bobby Valentine] knows what he needs, Ben knows what they need, but one team so far has that pitcher and that’s the Angels who got Zack Greinke. That’s the only team that’s got a significant starting pitcher, and they paid a huge price to get it, and Boston wasn’t going to pay that price to get Greinke, so you have to deal with the cards you have right now.”

To listen to the interview, click here. For complete Red Sox coverage, visit weei.com/redsox.