A Realistic Look at the 2026 Red Sox: Part I

[mvp 78]

45 minutes ago, Larry Cook said:

Shouldn’t we wait to see who is healthy and who is not, before thinking about our 2026 record???

We'll put a poll up at the end of ST that everyone can vote on. 

[moonslav59]

15 minutes ago, JoeBrady said:

Not necessarily.  Part of making predictions is to factor in injuries, as well as to factor in depth.

I agree, and I think looking at age and injury history should be a factor when projection how well some teams will do vs others. Nobody knows for sure what will happen with injuries, and for a while, we were intentionally signing injured pitchers in hopes they come back year two and salvage something good.

When you look at the Sox ages, only two key players are a concern: Chapman and Gray. No everyday player is way past prime.

When you look at injury prone players, only Casas, Mayer and Story stick out among everyday players with Abreu seemingly having several minor injuries over his shrt time in the bigs. Among pitchers, we already know Houck is out, so we aren't even counting him in the projections. Crawford, Sandoval and Slaten were injured last year, but I'm not sure I'd call any of them "prone."

The next thing I look at concerning injuries is the depth. I live near HOU and no team has had more major injuries to SP'ers over the last few years that they do, but they have had remarkable depth, until 2025. We had decent depth, last year, and it made a difference. I think people forget we lost our #2 SP (Houck) #4-5-6 slot pitchers (Crawford & Sandoval) and Buehler sucked so much we cut him loose, yet our rotation carried us. I'm not saying we can win without Crochet or even Suarez, but IMO, we have better AND deeper SP'er depth than maybe every other team in MLB. We have 3 guys looking at the 5 slot (Crawford, Sandoval & Oviedo) and then Tolle and Early MLB ready. That's a nice 4 man depth group (#6 to $9.) I'm not sure any team has a 4th OF'er as good as us, but here's the kicker, our best 3 defensive OF'ers are the best defensive OF in MLB and our best 3 batter OF'ers are likely top 6 or 8. Even with Ceddanne getting 600 OF ABs, we should be top 10 in OF offense. This last week or so saw us add enormous infield depth (I K-F, Monasterio, Seigler)as well as a starter (Durbin.) The infield D got way better. The infield O took a hit with the loss of Bregman, but Breggie missed a big chunk of 2025 and never came back to the same form. While fangraphs ranks our catchers lowly, I'm fine with the two we have and we added much better depth, there, too.

Let teh games begin!

[moonslav59]

7 hours ago, Hugh2 said:

They would be projected to be 1st or 2nd in every division in baseball other than the A.L. East where they are 3rd. 

To hell with the projections, this team is going to win 95 games. 

We should be top 6 or 7 in MLB and top 3-4 in the AL.

I had hopes I could say top 3-4 in MLB and top 2-3 in the AL, but I think we look better now, than last February (or last Sept-Oct.)

[Larry Cook]

56 minutes ago, JoeBrady said:

Not necessarily.  Part of making predictions is to factor in injuries, as well as to factor in depth.

I think Vegas would love this approach from everybody 

[drewski6]

2 hours ago, JoeBrady said:

Schilling was 100% correct when he said it.  And it intuitively makes sense.  If the Toronto misses 40 GS from their rotation, and we miss 10, I'd make a significant wager we finish ahead of them.

So you are saying that the guy who broke his promise to Wake when Wake was on his deathbed, who also scammed RI was 100% correct when he says that the team that gets the most starts from their regular starters will finish with the better record.

Harmony already told you that 2 yrs ago, the mariners got all their starts from their starters and struggled.  So....right there you know, not 100% true.

But sure lets say its 90% true.  I have a great idea. Lets have all 18 yr old non-drafted high school players on offense and have a 8 man rotation.  Because we are 8 deep "regular rotation", we'll prob get a lot of starts from our regular starters. Because when one gets hurt, we'll just drop to 7 man rotation, down to 6 man.....Sounds like a guaranteed championship to me, Im on board.

Yes, if Torontos starters miss 40, and our starters miss 10, we're likely to have a better record.  But that doesnt mean that this is 100% true.  On the flip, if we miss 40 starts from our rotation, except from one injury that we will not say.....I think we'll be better for it because I think our 6,7,8 pitchers are better than our 2,3,4 pitchers and Breslow wasted all that money.

100% true.

Also, why even go get Ranger and Gray if its 100% true that the team with most starts from their regular rotation will win most games. Because Schilling said it? He also said that the state of RI should loan him millions for a video game company, that went belly-up pretty fast

[drewski6]

1 hour ago, moonslav59 said:

We should be top 6 or 7 in MLB and top 3-4 in the AL.

I had hopes I could say top 3-4 in MLB and top 2-3 in the AL, but I think we look better now, than last February (or last Sept-Oct.)

This is about where I have us as well.  I just think that the teams in front of us, at least in some cases, are more than just a tiny step in front of us.

[moonslav59]

6 minutes ago, drewski6 said:

This is about where I have us as well.  I just think that the teams in front of us, at least in some cases, are more than just a tiny step in front of us.

We kinda fell apart last year, at the end. Gio, Bello and the bats. That's not to say we were better than our record indicated but the Pythagorean numbers said we were (or should have been)  better.

I think TOR and NYY stayed about the same and we improved to an unspecific degree. The Yanks are a much older team. TOR lost some key players and added question marks to replace them. BAL improved, but they started behind us.

SP: much better

Pen: about the same

Defense: much better

Offense: worse- maye much worse

These are not 4 equal parts, so it's hard to decide on how much better we will be, but on paper, I think 2-4 wins more. (We were 5 wins away from TOR and NYY in 2025.)

BTW, Pyth had NYY at 97 and TOR at 88, last year.

 

[5GoldGlovesOF,75]

2 hours ago, moonslav59 said:

Batters win the MVP because pitchers have their own award.

MVP Award voters should consider this:

PAs and PAs against

814 Crochet

696 Duran

683 Bello

654 Story

613 Giolito

587 Rafaela

1. Notice crochet with 118 more than Duran.

2. Which 3 were more responsible for us making the playoffs, last year?

Crochet/Bello/Gio or Duran/Story/Rafaela

I rest my case.

What's your case again? I gave '25 Crochet/Gio/Bello a lot of credit all day, and have said Sox fans should be happy if '26 Crochet/Gray/Suarez are at least as successful. I dunno how many here look at Duran/Story/Rafaela as consistently above average though. They're all capable of big moments, but can they be more consistent or at least equal their career years in 2026? 

You commented that teams with better hitting need to be consistent all year, and I responded that teams with good batters were more likely to always have some guys hitting well on a regular basis... what I didn't add is that those will be different guys; when some have bad nights, others can pick them up -- if they have enough quality bats in the line-up.

You're right that a lot has to go right, and every team can say that every year... but for the best line-ups, that usually means all they need is to stay healthy. This Boston offense is counting on a bunch of guys to be better than ever... so we can win at least as many as last year.

[moonslav59]

16 minutes ago, 5GoldGlovesOF,75 said:

What's your case again? I gave '25 Crochet/Gio/Bello a lot of credit all day, and have said Sox fans should be happy if '26 Crochet/Gray/Suarez are at least as successful. I dunno how many here look at Duran/Story/Rafaela as consistently above average though. They're all capable of big moments, but can they be more consistent or at least equal their career years in 2026? 

You commented that teams with better hitting need to be consistent all year, and I responded that teams with good batters were more likely to always have some guys hitting well on a regular basis... what I didn't add is that those will be different guys; when some have bad nights, others can pick them up -- if they have enough quality bats in the line-up.

You're right that a lot has to go right, and every team can say that every year... but for the best line-ups, that usually means all they need is to stay healthy. This Boston offense is counting on a bunch of guys to be better than ever... so we can win at least as many as last year.

My case is pitchers deserve MVP awards often. The best often face more batters than any batter has ever faced a pitcher in a season. The argument that they only play every 5 games doesn't hold water, to me. No batter ever gets 20-30 PAs a game, either.

The Sox 3 best pitchers were more important than our 3 best bats and maybe even our 4 or 5 or even 6 best bats.

I don't think we need a single player to have a career year on offense, although with players at their ages, it should happen.

Duran can play somewhere between the '24 and '25 seasons and be a huge help. 

Story had a decent year in '25 but far from his career best. Just a repeat of '25 would be great.

Contreras should be helped by Fenway and do better than '25, but need not have a career high (.888 or even over .840 like he did 5 times, already- just hit .800 to .825ish, maybe?)

Narvaez, Rafaela, Romy, Durbin and others- just repeat 2025.

I do expect a better 2026 from Abreu and maybe Anthony to just do the same as 2025 but with double the PAs, but neither needs to bust out. Mayer set a pretty low bar in 2025.

Of course, expecting everyone to do the same of better is probably a longer shot that expecting 3-4 to have career years, but we don't need a miracle.

[notin]

2 hours ago, drewski6 said:

So you are saying that the guy who broke his promise to Wake when Wake was on his deathbed, who also scammed RI was 100% correct when he says that the team that gets the most starts from their regular starters will finish with the better record.

Harmony already told you that 2 yrs ago, the mariners got all their starts from their starters and struggled.  So....right there you know, not 100% true.

But sure lets say its 90% true.  I have a great idea. Lets have all 18 yr old non-drafted high school players on offense and have a 8 man rotation.  Because we are 8 deep "regular rotation", we'll prob get a lot of starts from our regular starters. Because when one gets hurt, we'll just drop to 7 man rotation, down to 6 man.....Sounds like a guaranteed championship to me, Im on board.

Yes, if Torontos starters miss 40, and our starters miss 10, we're likely to have a better record.  But that doesnt mean that this is 100% true.  On the flip, if we miss 40 starts from our rotation, except from one injury that we will not say.....I think we'll be better for it because I think our 6,7,8 pitchers are better than our 2,3,4 pitchers and Breslow wasted all that money.

100% true.

Also, why even go get Ranger and Gray if its 100% true that the team with most starts from their regular rotation will win most games. Because Schilling said it? He also said that the state of RI should loan him millions for a video game company, that went belly-up pretty fast

Schilling is not exactly the voice of wisdom, and in many cases, not even the voice of common sense.

But the spirit of his point was the importance of the health of starting pitching, and he right that keeping all 5 starters healthy absolutely makes a team much, much more competitive.  That Mariner team didn’t go 75-87.  And they had a really young rotation with only Luis Castillo older than 27.  And they still almost made the postseason…

[moonslav59]

Let's assume Kelly, Romy & Casas begin the year on the IL or in AAA, our 26 man roster would have 10 players who did not play a single game for the Sox in 2025:

Suarez, Gray, Oviedo, Crawford, Sandoval, Watson (+Moran w 4 IP)

Contreras, Durbin, Kiner-Falefa & Monasterio

The AAA roster has at least 17 players new to the system:

Sikkema, Gamboa, Samaniego, Berrios, Sweet, Martinez, T Guerrero, Nittoli, K Keller

Gasper, Thaiss, Rodgers, Cheng, Ward, Lloyd, Seigler, Capra, Frazier

[moonslav59]

1 minute ago, notin said:

Schilling is not exactly the voice of wisdom, and in many cases, not even the voice of common sense.

But the spirit of his point was the importance of the health of starting pitching, and he right that keeping all 5 starters healthy absolutely makes a team much, much more competitive.  That Mariner team didn’t go 75-87.  And they had a really young rotation with only Luis Castillo older than 27.  And they still almost made the postseason…

When you look at the Sox ring seasons this century, you can see a very strong correlation between many GS'd by our top SP'ers and WS victories.

Even when you look at the near miss seasons, they were highlighted by upticks in pitching.

[5GoldGlovesOF,75]

2 hours ago, moonslav59 said:

My case is pitchers deserve MVP awards often. The best often face more batters than any batter has ever faced a pitcher in a season. The argument that they only play every 5 games doesn't hold water, to me. No batter ever gets 20-30 PAs a game, either.

The Sox 3 best pitchers were more important than our 3 best bats and maybe even our 4 or 5 or even 6 best bats.

Pitchers absolutely deserve MVP awards in some years. Pedro was by far the best player at his position in baseball the year two writers refused to vote for him in the Top 10 for MVP when he finished 2nd.

For five years Dennis Eckersly was by far the best player at his position -- which he invented: Closer -- and finally won an MVP (but it wasn't the season he walked three batters... in the entire season).

And the Sox go nowhere last year without their Big Three pitchers on the mound. The question is: after Crochet and Chapman, who was #3? Fangraphs says it's Whitlock, bWAR gives the edge to Bello.

Both gagged in the playoffs, but could've had better fates if anyone wearing a B on his helmet could hit...

[JoeBrady]

5 hours ago, drewski6 said:

I have a great idea. Lets have all 18 yr old non-drafted high school players on offense and have a 8 man rotation. 

It is to distinguish between two relatively even teams.  Not meant to compare my softball team with the NYY.  And, specifically, in this case, to the RS and NYY in 2007.

[JoeBrady]

2 hours ago, notin said:

Schilling is not exactly the voice of wisdom, and in many cases, not even the voice of common sense.

It doesn't really matter if he is a blooming idiot.  What he said at the time was perfectly logical and 100% right.  We got 140 GS from our rotation and 11-1 from Lester, Buchholz and Gabbard.

[drewski6]

11 hours ago, JoeBrady said:

It doesn't really matter if he is a blooming idiot.  What he said at the time was perfectly logical and 100% right.  We got 140 GS from our rotation and 11-1 from Lester, Buchholz and Gabbard.

Wait, Im not sure Ive heard blooming idiot. Is that like a blooming onion 

[drewski6]

11 hours ago, JoeBrady said:

It is to distinguish between two relatively even teams.  Not meant to compare my softball team with the NYY.  And, specifically, in this case, to the RS and NYY in 2007.

that makes it better, i would still recommend falling back from "100% true".  Cute quips arent even meant to be 100% true.  They are meant to be high level observations that are generally true.

[drewski6]

Its a cute quip, and possibly the best thing Schilling has ever said, Ill give you that.

[drewski6]

13 hours ago, 5GoldGlovesOF,75 said:

Pitchers absolutely deserve MVP awards in some years. Pedro was by far the best player at his position in baseball the year two writers refused to vote for him in the Top 10 for MVP when he finished 2nd.

For five years Dennis Eckersly was by far the best player at his position -- which he invented: Closer -- and finally won an MVP (but it wasn't the season he walked three batters... in the entire season).

And the Sox go nowhere last year without their Big Three pitchers on the mound. The question is: after Crochet and Chapman, who was #3? Fangraphs says it's Whitlock, bWAR gives the edge to Bello.

Both gagged in the playoffs, but could've had better fates if anyone wearing a B on his helmet could hit...

I thought Kira Sedwick was the OG closer.  

[5GoldGlovesOF,75]

6 minutes ago, drewski6 said:

I thought Kira Sedwick was the OG closer.  

LaRussa tried her, but she insisted on getting more than three outs in the 9th. 

Kira lives with husband Kevin Bacon on the family farm in Connecticut. My father was a farmer, and there's no closing in a dawn to dusk profession always getting ready for the next season all year every year... 

[moonslav59]

26 minutes ago, drewski6 said:

Wait, Im not sure Ive heard blooming idiot. Is that like a blooming onion 

Don't link those onions to idiocy. They are pure genius.

[JoeBrady]

54 minutes ago, drewski6 said:

Wait, Im not sure Ive heard blooming idiot. Is that like a blooming onion 

Strangely enough, I really wanted to call him a blooming onion.

[JoeBrady]

55 minutes ago, drewski6 said:

i would still recommend falling back from "100% true".

You're not wrong, but it feels like posting 'virtually 100% true' is too much work.

[JoeBrady]

56 minutes ago, drewski6 said:

Its a cute quip, and possibly the best thing Schilling has ever said, Ill give you that.

Very self-destructive.  It's like that with some people.  Without mentioning names, there are certain people where I cringe when I see their latest pronouncement.

[drewski6]

3 hours ago, moonslav59 said:

Don't link those onions to idiocy. They are pure genius.

I prefer Longhorns , Texas Roadhouse and even Chilis to Outback, personally.

I would take Outback over Applebees and TGI FRidays (if they still exist). 

[Hugh2]

22 hours ago, mvp 78 said:

We'll put a poll up at the end of ST that everyone can vote on. 

Suggestions:  we can put the poll up, but just have it closed before game 1

[mvp 78]

Per Cora, Rafaela and Abreu will only be in the OF when they are in the lineup this season (not 2b or DH). 

[notin]

19 hours ago, 5GoldGlovesOF,75 said:

Pitchers absolutely deserve MVP awards in some years. Pedro was by far the best player at his position in baseball the year two writers refused to vote for him in the Top 10 for MVP when he finished 2nd.

For five years Dennis Eckersly was by far the best player at his position -- which he invented: Closer -- and finally won an MVP (but it wasn't the season he walked three batters... in the entire season).

And the Sox go nowhere last year without their Big Three pitchers on the mound. The question is: after Crochet and Chapman, who was #3? Fangraphs says it's Whitlock, bWAR gives the edge to Bello.

Both gagged in the playoffs, but could've had better fates if anyone wearing a B on his helmet could hit...

I will take it a step further - they like rules for MVP eligibility and voting explicitly state pitchers are eligible…

[moonslav59]

3 hours ago, drewski6 said:

I prefer Longhorns , Texas Roadhouse and even Chilis to Outback, personally.

I would take Outback over Applebees and TGI FRidays (if they still exist). 

Yes, I only get the Texas Roadhouse one. It's often complementary with a coupon.

[moonslav59]

1 hour ago, mvp 78 said:

Per Cora, Rafaela and Abreu will only be in the OF when they are in the lineup this season (not 2b or DH). 

So, the idea of keeping Abreu's bat in the line-up while he "rests" at DH is not going to happen.

My guess we will face enough "tough lefties," where it's worth giving him a full day off, anyway.