Abraham Toro's Struggles Exacerbate Red Sox's Inactive Trade Deadline

Since June 13, Boston Red Sox first baseman Abraham Toro's season has taken a nosedive.

Entering play that day, the switch-hitter had a .330/.354/.574 slash line with five homers and a 150 wRC+, emerging as a viable middle-of-the-lineup bat.

That was through 99 plate appearances; since then, across his last 164, he's slashing .200/.274/.276 with two home runs and a 50 wRC+. This isn't a slump anymore—it accounts for over 60% of his volume at the big-league level in 2025.

During that span, Toro has a hard-hit rate of 27 percent. Only five hitters in the majors this year have a lower hard-hit rate. Only seven hitters post a lower barrel rate this year than Toro's 3.3% since June 13 as well. The 28-year-old doesn't walk much, hasn't hit for power in almost two months, has -3 defensive runs saved and outs above average at first base and, among first basemen with at least 250 plate appearances, ranks 30th out of 34 with -0.4 fWAR. He's simply been relied upon too much and for too long despite not performing.

When Opening Day first baseman Triston Casas ruptured his patellar tendon in early May, the Red Sox fan base went into a mass hysteria and begged Chief Baseball Officer Craig Breslow to get a viable replacement, because surviving the remaining 125 or so games seemed unlikely without legitimate production from the position. Unfortunately, steady production at first base isn't easy to find on May 2, so you have to patch together something and survive as long as possible.

The platoon of Toro with Romy Gonzalez worked for a while, as they slashed a combined .267/.317/.447 as first basemen through July 30. Gonzalez fought off an early second-half slump, but he is now mired in basically a 50-50 split between first and second base since the injury to Marcelo Mayer. Meanwhile, Toro has a 39 wRC+ in 32 plate appearances since the trade deadline.

With Kristian Campbell and top outfield prospect Jhostynxon Garcia getting reps at first base with Triple-A Worcester, it seems likely time is running out for Toro to turn his season around, but this falls back on Breslow for not truly prioritizing the first base position 11 days ago. Alex Speier of The Boston Globe reported the Red Sox hovered in the "due diligence" stage of the Josh Naylor sweepstakes. Naylor is slashing .288/.362/.577 with four homers in 15 games for Seattle. There wasn't a lot of smoke on the Ryan O'Hearn front for Boston either, but he had a .370 on-base percentage across his first eight games for San Diego.

The sample size is still small enough since the deadline passed to not harp too much on these (what look like) early misses, but there's a lot of pressure on a myriad of players with no track record of sustained success deep into the season to be super productive in a pennant race. Maybe Campbell comes back and is April Campbell -- reminder, he slashed .301/.407/.495 through the first month of the season -- but there's also a real chance he isn't. Maybe Garcia continues to hammer the baseball and any potential deficiencies with the glove are negated ten-fold by his power, a la 2021 Kyle Schwarber, but the likelihood is that he doesn't in his first taste of big-league action.

Therein lies the problem, though. That's two maybes, and neither player is actively on the big-league roster. To add a third, perhaps Mayer comes back and has no lingering wrist issues while Gonzalez moves to full-time first base and performs there. Again, it's possible, but the young infielder was hardly killing the ball before his injury, posting a .217 average in his last 29 games, and who's to say how long it takes for him to trust and/or tolerate the pain in his wrist.

It goes back to the deadline, in which the Red Sox also traded a first base prospect in Blaze Jordan for left-hander Steven Matz. They didn't do enough to help the current iteration of the roster. To this point, it hasn't affected them too much (6-4 since the deadline), but it's hard to feel good about such a glaring weakness in the everyday lineup.