Article: End of Season Grades: Infield

[Alexandra Tavaglione]

With the final series of the season underway, it's time to assess the players. From Triston Casas to Enmanuel Valdez, here is how I graded each infielder's performance during the 2024 campaign.

Now that the season is just about over, it’s time to grade each player on their 2024 season performance; starting on the infield. According to FanGraphs, Boston's infield has been worth just 4.2 WAR, ranking it 24th among the 30 clubs. Second base was the big killer, as the team's -2.3 WAR ranked dead last. First base was rough, mainly because the team was missing its starter for most of the season. Speaking of whom, let's start with...

Triston Casas

Casas missed nearly four months (99 games) of the season due to a rib cage injury, but when he's been on the field, his production has mirrored what we saw through the second half of 2023. He has 12 home runs with a .238 batting average and .799 OPS. While Casas struggled when he first returned on August 16, he has recently tapped back into the power that we saw last season, with 6 homers since August 20.. 

Casas has only played a small sample of games this year, making it tough to give him an accurate grade. But judging the games he did play, I would give Casas a B- on the season. He missed a lot of time and really struggled upon his return from the IL, but before his injury and more recently, Casas has returned to form. His next challenge is staying healthy throughout the 2025 season.

Rafael Devers

Despite being shut down after dealing with various knee and shoulder injuries throughout the season, Devers still put up his typical All-Star-caliber campaign. He played in 138 games, collected 143 hits, 34 doubles, five triples (yes, five), and 28 homers. The advanced metrics have never loved his defense, and this year (-6 OAA) was no different. The eye test isn't quite so harsh — Raffy makes routine plays and many of the difficult ones — but his .960 fielding percentage ranks sixth-worst among all qualified players. All in all, Raffy has had a solid season, earning himself an A-. He managed to put up one of his best offesnive seasons despite playing through injuries, and they became too much to bear, he posted almost every day.

Romy Gonzalez 

Gonzalez traded his White Sox for Red this offseason, coming over over as a waiver claim in January. Even though he hasn't been an everyday player, he has still been a solid right-handed bench bat and utility player. Coming in off the bench in 41 games, Gonzalez is running a 99 wRC+ with three of his six homers coming as a pinch hitter. Gonzalez will be getting more starts with Devers out. Based on what we’ve seen, I would say he has exceeded expectations, earning him a B on the season.

Vaughn Grissom

Grissom had a very rough 2024 season and struggled to stay on the field due to a hamstring injury. When he wasn’t on the IL, he had trouble getting things to click at the plate. In 29 games at the big-league level, Grissom batted just .154 with more strikeouts than hits. However, his underperformance shouldn’t be the only information Red Sox fans use to form their opinions. Grissom put up a solid batting line in 55 Triple-A games, and he's the youngest player on the roster at age 23. He still has time to continue to establish himself as an everyday player. Even with that taken into consideration, Grissom still very much underperformed, and although it's not in any way his fault, Chris Sale's dominance in Atlanta made this trade look that much more painful. All in all, Grissom receives a D.

David Hamilton

Hamilton has appeared in 98 games this season, with the majority of his playing time coming at shortstop (62 games, 50 games started). Hamilton has had some rough moments this year, both defensively and at the plate. His errors came in bunches, and both the eye test and the advanced metrics see him as a potential liability at shortstop, where he has -3 OAA.  He has been much better at second base (41 games, 29 starts), where he has a positive 3 OAA. His offensive production was also streaky, and while his .248/.303/.395 slash line isn't that bad at first glance, when you take a deeper look into his metrics, he is below average in almost every category except sprint speed (where he ranks in the 95th percentile). He put that speed to good use, stealing 33 bases, tied for ninth in the majors despite heading to the IL with a hand injury in August. With all this in consideration, Hamilton gets a C-.

Ceddanne Rafaela 

Rafaela has been a defensive anchor in center and has come up big in some clutch situations. If the team needed a big hit and he came up to bat, you could almost guarantee that he was gonna come though. He has some major plate discipline issues: running the highest chase rate and lowest walk rate of all qualified players, along with a 9th percentile whiff rate, 22nd percentile strikeout rate. Despite his growing pains this season, Rafaela has still been a key contributor. The advanced metrics didn't like his performance at shortstop while he filled in for Trevor Story, but he's a Gold-Glove-caliber center fielder. In all, he is still a rookie with so much room to grow. With all of that taken into consideration, Rafaela has earned a C.

Nick Sogard
The switch hitter made his debut in early August and made just 78 plate appearances with the Red Sox. His .282 average and .333 on-base percentage have been acceptable this year in this limited sample.  His biggest values have been his defensive versatility and ability to hit from both sides of the plate. It's difficult to give a fair graide with such a limited amount of information, but given the situation that he has been put in, I would say that he has been a serviceable player off the bench. Sogard has earned a C-. 

Trevor Story

Story missed the majority of the season yet again. He wasn’t even supposed to see the field at all after his early April shoulder injury, but he made a return in early September. During the first few days of the season and since his return, Story has shown why he is so valuable to the infield. He's a reliable anchor up the middle. While his presence at the plate hasn’t quite been as impactful as his defense, he still provides a much-needed right-handed presence, even if he isn’t the big power hitter in the heart of the order. As with Sogard, there isn’t a ton grade Story on, but he gets a lot of credit for coming back from what was expected to be season-ending injury. With all of this in mind, Story receives a D+ on the season. He gets credit for coming back after his season was assumed to be over, but he has played in few games and hasn’t made a huge impact. While the Red Sox were not mathematically eliminated from playoff contention until game 159, Story’s return was still too late to help save the season. 

Enmanuel Valdez

Valdez has been up and down between Triple- A and Boston frequently throughout the year. He’s played 75 games at the major league level and has had bursts of offensive success, but his 74 wRC+ is a far cry from the numbers he's put up in the minors or in his short big-league stint last season. On the other hand, he hasn’t gotten consistent playing time in his time in the big leagues this season, which makes it hard for any player to get their footing. His -8 OAA are tied for second-worst among all second basemen, and they look even worse on a rate basis. All in all, Valdez has earned a D. 

 

Recap: 

Casas: B- 

Devers: A-

Gonzalez: B

Grissom: D

Hamilton: C- 

Rafaela: C

Sogard: C-

Story: D+

Valdez: D 

 

View full article

[Bellhorn04]

Nice work, Alexandra.

I think my only serious disagreement is with Hamilton.  FanGraphs gives him a WAR of 1.6 in about half a season's work, 5th best among Sox position players.  Considering his minimum pay and the virtually nonexistent expectations, I'd have to give him a B+ myself. 

[mvp 78]

My only real question is that Hamilton was a 2.6 bWAR guy this year. For someone that was seen as the last guy on the 40 man roster, that's really amazing production and quite the breakout performance. I don't think I could give him anything less than a B or B-. I know his defense is subpar, but I think if he was left as a backup 2B/roleplayer, his warts would be diminished. Devers only produced 3.7 bWAR and you gave him an A-. 

[mvp 78]

1 minute ago, Bellhorn04 said:

I think my only serious disagreement is with Hamilton.  FanGraphs gives him a WAR of 1.6 in about half a season's work, 5th best among Sox position players.  Considering his minimum pay and the virtually nonexistent expectations, I'd have to give him a B+ myself. 

😎

[5GoldGlovesOF,75]

Romy -- cut from the worst team in history -- gets an A for coming through in more ways than expected.

Sogard gets a B because he made the majors when he wasn't supposed to, and once he got there, looked like he belonged.

Maybe I expect more out of the best students, but I only give a C to both Casas and Devers. Yes, they aced a lot of pop quizzes, but their end-of-the-semester projects were incomplete (no bibliographies!) and each had excused absences during the big week of state tests. Our class was really counting on them to raise our scores...

And Grissom gets an F because the decision to transfer to Fenway High this year was a complete failure.

[moonslav59]

Nice article.

A lot of these grades are based on expectations, otherwise Devers gets an A+.

I'll go...

C- Casas: too much time misses.

A Devers forevers

B Romy did more than anyone can have hoped for

F Grissom: maybe my expectations, but he fell way short in '24.

B+ DHam, perhaps the biggest difference from the article.

C+ Rafaela, despite the poor D, he stabilized a shaky situation.

C Sogard was exactly what I expected

D Story, since I admire how he fought to come back in September

D- E Valdez, perhaps the worst defense possible at 2B.