Article: Make or Break Players on the 2025 Red Sox: Brayan Bello

[Amrit Brown]

If Brayan Bello can live up to the potential that earned him a big-time contract extension before the 2024 season, he could change the entire outlook for the Red Sox in 2025.

If you can remember back that far, Brayan Bello started on Opening Day for the Red Sox in 2024. Spring training starts with Bello nursing a sore shoulder and buried in pitching-staff uncertainty alongside Walker Buehler, Lucas Giolito, and Kutter Crawford. Tanner Houck or Garrett Crochet will be on the mound in Arlington to kick off the season. Bello fell massively short of lofty expectations in 2024, raising questions for someone who was supposed to be the ace of the future.

So what went wrong in 2024? 
As Alex Mayes recently explained, a combination of stuff and pitch usage explains the issues. Bello completely scrapped his four-seam fastball to start 2024. The change made sense, as the pitch was hit hard in 2023 and induced a low whiff percentage. Moreover, it fit with the organization's No Fastballs Philosophy. When Bello reintroduced the pitch in July, he had far more success. He had a 5.32 ERA in the first half and a 3.47 ERA in the second half of the season.

The reintroduction of the fastball may have been necessary because Bello's struggles with his other pitches. According to the pitch modeling metric Stuff+, his slider, sinker, and changeup all graded out worse in 2024 than they did in 2023. They also all graded out as below the league average. The 2024 season was the first of Bello's career in which his cumulative Stuff+ rating was below the league average. Walks were also a problem despite Bello’s above-average Location+ score. When you walk 9.1% of the hitters you face and leave only 72.1% of runners on base (39th out of 58 qualified starters), you'll give up some runs.

To the great frustration of my father (and to the great detriment of his fantasy baseball roster), Bello struggled to close out starts and pitch into the fifth and sixth innings. Bello posted a 6.63 ERA on the third time through the order (20th-worst among the 111 pitchers with at least 20 innings pitched on the third TTO). That stat comes as no surprise to me as, I was the victim of many car ride outbursts from my dad, as he, an Orioles fan, lamented a fifth-inning implosion or Alex Cora’s choice to send Bello out in the sixth. June 8 lives in baseball infamy in my home not because my college team won, 9-2, but because of a five-run fifth inning from Bello vs the lowly White Sox.

 

What can go right in 2025?
Bello still features above-average fastball velocity and boasts a solid changeup that graded out as one of baseball's best as recently as 2023. With a full complement of pitches in 2025, his ability to throw off hitters' timing should shine. A return to the norm in walk rate would also help. Keeping runners off the bases would reduce high-pressure situations – which he faced with frustrating regularity in 2024 – and lower pitch counts, allowing him to pitch longer into games.

Bello will see less of the spotlight this year. Drawing comparisons to Pedro Martinez, no matter how ridiculous they are, before your second full year is absurd. It was clear in 2024 that he wasn’t ready to be the team's ace. Now, the story is completely different. The rotation has four players who were recently considered aces. Bello has the chance to show up to work every day under much less pressure, and he recently admitted that the pressure of his large extension got to him in 2024.

Lastly, Bello could simply pick up where he left off in 2024. Running 3.47 ERA through the entire season would constitute a huge success.

How will this impact the Sox?
If Bello can put up a successful year, he'll greatly improve the depth of the Boston start. And if things go well across the board, all of a sudden, the Red Sox have a dynamic trio of Crochet, Houck, and Bello at the top of the rotation for the foreseeable future. 

A successful season for Bello, where he works deep into games, would also mark him as another cornerstone of the Red Sox staff. On a team where many starters have been plagued by injuries and the back end of a likely six-man rotation is filled with question marks, another stalwart on the staff is a necessity. It could be the difference between missing the playoffs and making the Wild Card series, or the difference between making the Wild Card and winning a division title. 

Lastly, and this may just be my perception, a successful Bello season could be enormous for the Red Sox in the postseason. With true aces harder and harder to come by, bullpen games have become much more common in the playoffs. A successful campaign would give the Red Sox four excellent arms to throw out in a playoff series.

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