A Realistic View of the 2025 Red Sox: Part II

[Larry Cook]

Every year that crochet and Anthony have been on the Red Sox team, we have gone to the post season!!  

[moonslav59]

1 hour ago, Larry Cook said:

Every year that crochet and Anthony have been on the Red Sox team, we have gone to the post season!!  

Also, Narvaez, Chapman and Matz.

[alsoason]

Glad to be wrong going into the last 9 games of the season and my 3-6 prediction, playoffs should be interested and the best thing is that Devers will be watching. Best move of the season, shipping off that selfish child. Congrats Bosox.

[moonslav59]

It would be nice to end the season with 90 wins, but we will give some players a rest.

I like the way our pitching lines up for a 3 game series. Our three top SP'ers and 2-3 pen arms might pitch 22-24 of the 27 IP that might be needed in the 3 game series. Maybe they pitch 25-27 of them.

Then, there is a day off before the next round, and if we win the first 2 games, our 3rd SP'er can start game 1 and our 1-2 SP'ers can pitch game 3 & 4. We may only need our #4 SP'er once before the ALCS.

[moonslav59]

Updated Sox OPS after tonight's big win:

.859 Anthony

.845 Refsnyder

.826 Romy

.822 Bregman

.794 Abreu

.788 Lowe

.734 Eaton

(All these top 6 batters missed a lot of time- not all by injuries.)

.775 Duran

.746 Story

.728 Narvaez

.704 Rafaela

.698 Yoshida

(These 5 have been so very important, all year, or down the stretch, like Masa. The first 4 have stayed relatively healthy and have over 1/3 of the team's PAs in 2025!)

I wrote earlier how Cora worked magic with a pitching staff that should not have done this well, but he also deserves credit for cobbling together a pretty decent offense, despite his boss trading away his #1 bat, his next #1 bat has missed the last month of the season, and his next two best hitters- Bregman and Abreu missed a lot of time, too.

 

[Hitch]

49 minutes ago, moonslav59 said:

Updated Sox OPS after tonight's big win:

.859 Anthony

.845 Refsnyder

.826 Romy

.822 Bregman

.794 Abreu

.788 Lowe

.734 Eaton

(All these top 6 batters missed a lot of time- not all by injuries.)

.775 Duran

.746 Story

.728 Narvaez

.704 Rafaela

.698 Yoshida

(These 5 have been so very important, all year, or down the stretch, like Masa. The first 4 have stayed relatively healthy and have over 1/3 of the team's PAs in 2025!)

I wrote earlier how Cora worked magic with a pitching staff that should not have done this well, but he also deserves credit for cobbling together a pretty decent offense, despite his boss trading away his #1 bat, his next #1 bat has missed the last month of the season, and his next two best hitters- Bregman and Abreu missed a lot of time, too.

 

I think it's his work with the offence which speaks most highly. Against a lot of people's wishes, he platooned this team into a contender.

[moonslav59]

9 hours ago, Hitch said:

I think it's his work with the offence which speaks most highly. Against a lot of people's wishes, he platooned this team into a contender.

The platooning was a big part, but there are other reasons we only have 3 batters who qualify in PAs for batting awards. An interesting aspect of that is of those three, none are hitting over .776.

Cora had to deal with...

His GM trading away his best batter (Devers) in early June.

His top replacement batter for Devers (Anthony) went down in late August (after the deadline.)

His .820 career BA 1Bman going down for the season in early May.

His back-up 1Bman (Toro) stating off with a hot week or 10 days, then imploding.

His 2nd or 3rd best batter (Bregman) missing several key weeks in misd summer.

His back-up 3Bman (Mayer) finally appeared to fix the 2B problem, once Bregman returned, then he got hurt for the rest of the season.

His 5 deep OF turned into having to use Eaton, because Anthony and another OF (Abreu) missed most of September.

His hottest late season batter (Yoshida) missed the first 4 months of the season.

Some minor injuries kept Narvaez and Refsnyder out for some periods of time.

The pitching injuries have been well documented, but cobbling to gether many working line-ups through all of the above was a pretty amazing feat by a manager.

Somehow we won, despite this...

.659 Toro in 294 PAs (10th on team)

.664 Campbell in 262 (11th)

.580 DHam in 186 (14th)

.498 Wong in 181

.580 Casas in 112

.657 Sogard in 97

Sabol & Sanchez went 2 for 20

 

 

 

 

[Bellhorn04]

Cora is pretty damn good IMHO.

[moonslav59]

1 minute ago, Bellhorn04 said:

Cora is pretty damn good IMHO.

Agreed, and it doesn't bother me that Brez was out 11th pick: he's pretty damn good, too!

[moonslav59]

A big part of the success of this team came from our "secondary players." I guess when your team lacks a top starpower batter, you kind of have to rely on a team effort, but I feel like it went beyond even that.

All year, I pointed out how our 5-9 batters outperformed all other teams in OPS by slots, but what makes that more remarkable is that we did it with so many back-ups.

Remember, Narvaez was Wong's back-up, and he won the FT job.

Campbell started the season as our 2Bman, and we morphed into DHam, Mayer, Romy and a few others. Mayer also covered for Bregman, when he went down. Eaton played some there, after Mayer went down.

Casas went down in early May and we cycled through Toro & Romy before adding Lowe.

Romy and Ref hit vs RHPs more than planned.

Now, Yoshida has formly won back his DH position after missing about 4 months.

A lot of moving parts over the season.

4 different catchers is not out of the norm, but our back-up has 2/3 of the innings.

6 different 1Bmen with 5 over 94 innings.

2B was once again a merry-g-round with 6 guys over 56 innings and 4 over 165, including our GG CF'er playing 2B too often.

7 players at 3B, with 4 over 60 innings.

Amazingly, the SS position was the most one-sided with Story gtiing 1365 of the 1430 innings at SS. (DHam had 60 and nobody else more than 3.)

The OF saw a lot of shuffling and Rafaela used at 2B, a lot, but we did see 3 guys with 800+ innings in the OF (1337 Duran, 1149 Rafaela & 829 Abreu, who was hurt.) Anthony had 442 and DH'd some. Ref has 256 and was hurt for a while. Eaton had 134, KC 69 and Masa 32. The PASSWORD had 25 and Sogard 17.

Hats off to a pretty decent defense that improved greatly as the year went on. Despite 21 errors at SS, it was nice to see Story make so many great plays there.

The Sox are T for 9th in team DRS but are just 2 away from 7th. They are also 9th in team OAA, so I think it's pretty safe to say, we willed ourselves into a top 10 defense, after being horrible for several years beforehand. Traditionalists will point to the .980 last place Flg % and neglect the value of making plays nobody else makes (or very few do,) but so be it. .985 is 20th and .987 is 10th, so just .002 separates a top 10 from bottom 10 team.

Good job by Brez fixing the defense, which I'm sure helped our pitchers look better.

[notin]

13 hours ago, moonslav59 said:

Also, Narvaez, Chapman and Matz.

And the Nate’s - Eaton and Lowe!!

[moonslav59]

3 hours ago, notin said:

And the Nate’s - Eaton and Lowe!!

and Justin Wilson along with other pitchers.

[Larry Cook]

I really wish our veterans would step it up offensively 

[moonslav59]

There will be an all AL East bracket to the AL side of the playoffs:

#5 BOS at #4 NYY for 3 games in NY.

The winner plays TOR in a 5 game series w TOR getting home field advantage. 

The winner faces the other half of the bracket that includes #2 SEA facing the winner of DET v CLE.

It seems a bit rough on the AL East, when the #1, #2 and #4 best records are all from the ALE, and only one can advance to the ALCS.

SEA has the 3rd best record and gets for face the weakest 2 teams by  records in the playoffs winner.

The ALE also has the #10 and #12 teams in the AL and the other two divisions have the 3 worst teams in the AL and 9 or the worst 11 teams in the AL.

[5GoldGlovesOF,75]

The 2025 Red Sox team going to the playoffs... giving credit where credit's due.

Breslow guys: Narvaez, Lowe, Gonzalez, Bregman, Eaton... Crochet, Giolito, Chapman, Wilson, Slaten, Weissert, Matz, Tolle, Early, Harrison. IL: Fitts, Criswell, May, Hendriks, Hicks

Bloom guys: Abreu, Story, Yoshida, Refsnyder, Wong, Sogard, Hamilton, ... Whitlock, Murphy, Kelly... IL: Anthony, Mayer, Bernardino, Dobbins, Winckowski... Banned in Boston: Devers (extended by Bloom; originally signed by Cherington).

Dombrowski guys: Duran, Rafaela... Bello... IL: Casas, Houck

I think that's a 40-man group -- with 30% currently injured, maybe Cora deserves more credit than he's often given by fandom. Just getting this squad to the postseason -- without key core players from the past (Devers, Casas, Houck) and future (Anthony, Mayer, Dobbins) is a feat worthy of the 2021 Covid club.

[moonslav59]

1 hour ago, 5GoldGlovesOF,75 said:

The 2025 Red Sox team going to the playoffs... giving credit where credit's due.

Breslow guys: Narvaez, Lowe, Gonzalez, Bregman, Eaton... Crochet, Giolito, Chapman, Wilson, Slaten, Weissert, Matz, Tolle, Early, Harrison. IL: Fitts, Criswell, May, Hendriks, Hicks

Bloom guys: Abreu, Story, Yoshida, Refsnyder, Wong, Sogard, Hamilton, ... Whitlock, Murphy, Kelly... IL: Anthony, Mayer, Bernardino, Dobbins, Winckowski... Banned in Boston: Devers (extended by Bloom; originally signed by Cherington).

Dombrowski guys: Duran, Rafaela... Bello... IL: Casas, Houck

I think that's a 40-man group -- with 30% currently injured, maybe Cora deserves more credit than he's often given by fandom. Just getting this squad to the postseason -- without key core players from the past (Devers, Casas, Houck) and future (Anthony, Mayer, Dobbins) is a feat worthy of the 2021 Covid club.

Nice breakdown. It should be mentioned that several Brez additions were made possible by trading Bloom prospects and players- many with very high trade value.

[5GoldGlovesOF,75]

22 minutes ago, moonslav59 said:

Nice breakdown. It should be mentioned that several Brez additions were made possible by trading Bloom prospects and players- many with very high trade value.

That's fair... just like a certain Brez subtraction who was a Dombro pitcher with very low trade value  -- who as soon as he left instantly morphed back into Cy Young after a half decade of Boston slugitude.

[moonslav59]

2 minutes ago, 5GoldGlovesOF,75 said:

That's fair... just like a certain Brez subtraction who was a Dombro pitcher with very low trade value  -- who as soon as he left instantly morphed back into Cy Young after a half decade of Boston slugitude.

...and how many of DD's best additions were made possible by Ben's highly-regarded prospects.

Hey, we probably don't sign Gio without the money saved from the Sale trade. (Sale is hurt, again while Gio will likely start a playoff game for us.)

[Larry Cook]

Crochet, giolita and bello is the rotation in the playoffs. 
Chapman, Whitlock, Wilson, weissert, slaten matz are probably locks for playoff bullpen. 
 

who gets the remaining open bullpen spots? 

[moonslav59]

39 minutes ago, Larry Cook said:

Crochet, giolita and bello is the rotation in the playoffs. 
Chapman, Whitlock, Wilson, weissert, slaten matz are probably locks for playoff bullpen. 
 

who gets the remaining open bullpen spots? 

We probably only need 11 pitchers- 12 tops, but we'll need an innings eater, in case someone(s) gets yanked early or we want a mop up long relief guy. I'd go with 2: Early and Harrison. That makes 11 with your 9.

The 12th and maybe 13th guys would be between Murphy, Tolle and Kelly- in that order, in my opinion. (Kelly out and maybe Tolle, too..)

I'd like to give Cora more everyday player options, so he can PH and PR more often. I doubt we go with 15 everyday players, but 14 could happen:

11 Locks: Bregman, Story, Duran, Rafaela, Abreu, Narvaez, Yoshida, Romy, Refsnyder, Lowe, Wong.

That leaves 2-3 from: (IMO, by this order)

Eaton

Sogard

DHam (likely odd man out)

[5GoldGlovesOF,75]

4 minutes ago, moonslav59 said:

We probably only need 11 pitchers- 12 tops, but we'll need an innings eater, in case someone(s) gets yanked early or we want a mop up long relief guy. I'd go with 2: Early and Harrison. That makes 11 with your 9.

The 12th and maybe 13th guys would be between Murphy, Tolle and Kelly- in that order, in my opinion. (Kelly out and maybe Tolle, too..)

I'd like to give Cora more everyday player options, so he can PH and PR more often. I doubt we go with 15 everyday players, but 14 could happen:

11 Locks: Bregman, Story, Duran, Rafaela, Abreu, Narvaez, Yoshida, Romy, Refsnyder, Lowe, Wong.

That leaves 2-3 from: (IMO, by this order)

Eaton

Sogard

DHam (likely odd man out)

Agree with all your choices. Tolle has one pitch. a great fastball, but which MLB batters who make the playoffs can presumably hit. However, he'd a useful one-inning reliever vs. the Guardians, who have the worst offense in the AL... otherwise, trust Murphy more than Kelly.

Eaton has earned his spot this month. Sogard doesn't have the wheels of Hamilton, but he's a better baseball player -- solid defender, and even pinch-hit for Rafalea and made walk-off contact. Just can't count on Hammy to do either of those.

[moonslav59]

1 hour ago, 5GoldGlovesOF,75 said:

Agree with all your choices. Tolle has one pitch. a great fastball, but which MLB batters who make the playoffs can presumably hit. However, he'd a useful one-inning reliever vs. the Guardians, who have the worst offense in the AL... otherwise, trust Murphy more than Kelly.

Eaton has earned his spot this month. Sogard doesn't have the wheels of Hamilton, but he's a better baseball player -- solid defender, and even pinch-hit for Rafalea and made walk-off contact. Just can't count on Hammy to do either of those.

DHam has 2 pluses:

1. Baserunning, but Eaton is nearly as good at that.

2. Defense at 2B, but Romy is good enough at 2B and might play their FT. The only issue might be that Romy could play 1B vs LHPs, since Lowe really sucks vs lefties, but again, DHam sucks vs LHPs, too, so no way I play him over Lowe.

Sorry, DHam. You sit this out. You did nothing to earn a slot.

[moonslav59]

It's pretty telling that the Sox have just 3 batters qualify for things like the batting title (more than 502.)

OPS in order of most PAs in 2025:

.774 Duran (another very good season for Jarren)

.741 Story (finally, a full season)

.709 Rafaela (nice finish to '25)

_______________________

300-501 PAs

.822 Bregman (missed time)

.725 Narvaez (big plus to team)

.786 Abreu (missed time)

.826 Romy (came into his own)

.859 Anthony (We could use him, right now!)

______________________

150-299 PAs:

.660 Toro

.664 Campbell

.838 Refsnyder

.695 Yoshida

.590 DHam

.500 Wong

_____________________

20-149 PAs

.674 Mayer (stabilized 3B & 2B for a short while)

.790 Lowe (stabilized 1B)

.580 Casas (His injury destabilized 1B)

.661 Sogard (Did okay as a deep sub)

.731 Eaton (Did more than okay as a deep sub)

[moonslav59]

Final Pitching ERAs for 2025 (listed in order of most total batters faced)

60+ IP (Batters faced)

2.59 Crochet 814 (The biggest addition)

3.35 Bello 700 (statement year)

3.41 Giolito 613 (redemption year)

5.45 Buehler 508 (added to the list of failed SP signings)

2.25 Whitlock 293 (Huge season)

2.82 Weissert 27 (unsung pen hero)

4.13 Dobbins 256 (played a key role)

1.17 Chapman 228 (amazing season)

____________________

30-59 IP

3.14 Bernardino 224 (Did fine)

3.35 Wilson 207 (helped a lot)

8.04 Houck 203 (gone till '27)

5.00 Fitts 195 (meh)

3.95 Newcomb 190 (should moved to pen)

4.58 Kelly 152 (meh)

3.12 Murphy 148 (earned a look in '26)

4.24 Slaten 137 (glad he's back)

_________________

15 to 29 IP

5.40 D May 133 (UGH...

8.20 Hicks 97 (...LEE)

2.08 Matz 82 (Nice deadline get)

3.57 Criswell 80 (too bad got hurt)

2.33 Early 79 (Wow!)

3.31 Alcala 76 (didn't stay long)

6.06 Tolle 74 (Needs some movement on his FBs)

4.15 Guerrero 72 (meh)

___________________

Under 15 IP

Hendriks 59

Harrison 56

Winckowski 52

I Campbell 28

Burdi 21

Moran 20

Stock 15

Fulmer 13

Toro 8

Eaton 4

[5GoldGlovesOF,75]

Casas' injury also completely destabilized home run production, since his injury directly caused the loss of both his longball potential, and our 35 HR, $300 million dollar baby.

Casas and Devers have identical career 4.7 home run percentages.

Story's is 4.6, Abreu 4.1, Bregman 3.9.

[moonslav59]

Top Home OPS (Away)

.990 Lowe .671

.976 Devers .826

.880 Duran .677

.874 Eaton .608

.861 Ref .809

.842 Romy .804

.820 Narvaez .637

.806 Anthony .910

.775 Story .709

.761 Bregman .875

.759 Rafaela .662

.744 Mayer .620

.738 Abreu .852

.694 Sogard .603

.657 Casas .521

.617 Yoshida .755

.600 Toro .724

.533 DHam .638

.530 Wong .473

.470 Campbell .847

[moonslav59]

vs RHPs

.903 Anthony

.864 Lowe

.851 Duran

.809 Bregman

.808 Abreu

.767 Eaton

.743 Story

.740 Mayer

.732 Yoshida

.723 Narvaez

.720 Rafaela

.718 Romy (Good enough for FT)

.659 Campbell

.617 DHam

.616 Refsnyder

.552 Sogard

.503 Wong

________________

vs LHPs

.978 Romy (KaPOW!)

.959 Refsnyder (4 straight seasons, now!)

.857 Sogard

.855 Bregman

.770 Anthony (Proven FT'er?)

.734 Story (did well vs both)

.731 Narvaez (nearly identical to v RHPs)

.678 Rafaela (Career reverse splits .698 v R/.642 v L)

.676 Abreu (FT, next year?)

.675 Campbell

.673 Eaton

.600 Duran (maybe he needs platoon- not Abreu)

.508 Yoshida

.488 Wong (Career reverse splits .688/.660)

.416 Mayer (questions about being a FT batter)

.402 Lowe (should never start v L)

.358 DHam (should never bat v L)

 

[moonslav59]

Post All Star Game

.916 Anthony (.750 Sept)

.828 Ref (.785)

.819 Duran (.692)

.790 Lowe (.752)

.780 DHam (.704)

.778 Story (.795)

.775 Eaton (.898)

.728 Romy  (.813)

.727 Bregman (.640)

.694 Abreu

.690 Yoshida (.837)

.650 Sogard (.695)

.625 Wong (.590)

.620 Narvaez (.702)

.587 Rafaela (.669)

.488 Toro

[moonslav59]

Team Records Since June 30th:

50-28 MIL

48-29 BOS

49-30 TOR

47-31 PHI

48-32 CLE

47-32 SEA

46-33 NYY

[5GoldGlovesOF,75]

Super amped the Sox made the postseason. Even if it's quick, the young core -- most who won't play -- still get to experience the suspense and pandemonium of the playoffs. 

Re. the WC series with all games in NYC: just watching one in the Bronx is a grind, stressing on every swing the entire night that a Yankee won't pop up to right field. The Yanks have five guys with more homers than any Red Sox, and eight with at least 19; Boston has two.

But regular season head-to-head doesn't matter, except to the boys who can carry the confidence of their accomplishments into October. 

Does a longer series give the best team more time to shine and emerge victorious? If so, a short series can favor a club with superstars who can make instant impacts. The Red Sox have two: Crochet and Chapman... even though it's Best-of-3, it still feels like Game One is the Wild Card GAME.