Red Sox Video
On Friday, I examined the ways that the Opening Day lineup the Red Sox settled on affected the team’s defense. Today, I’m going to talk about the offense. And while the offense should be a bit better – that tends to happen when you add Alex Bregman and Kristian Campbell – but that’s not the biggest takeaway. Are you ready for the biggest takeaway?
The Offense Is Finally Balanced
We spent so much time during the offseason – way, way too much time – worrying about the fact that the Red Sox were too left-handed. Now that the team has found its right-handed power bat in Alex Bregman, and now that we know for sure that Kristian Campbell will be starting at second base rather than the left-handed hitting David Hamilton, we’ve just added two right-handed bats. Assuming that Wilyer Abreu platoons with Rob Refsnyder in right field as expected — so far, Abreu has gotten every start, as the team hasn't faced a lefty — that means the team will have five lefties in the lineup when a righty pitches, and five righties in the lineup when a lefty pitches. Sounds pretty balanced to me! Here's a bigger question, though:
Is the Lineup Better?
The answer isn’t as much of a slam dunk as you’d think. Alex Bregman is a great hitter, but by shifting Rafael Devers to DH, he basically took Masataka Yoshida’s spot, and over his two seasons in Boston, Yoshida has a 112 wRC+. Over the same timeframe, Bregman has a 122 wRC+. Last season, Yoshida came in at 115 and Bregman at 118. There’s always a chance he’ll put up a vintage Bregman season, knocking 30 homers over the Green Monster with a 145 wRC+, but we probably shouldn’t expect that of him. Most likely, he’s an improvement, but not a huge one.
The bigger improvements should come at first and second base. In 2024, the Red Sox ran a 103 wRC+ at first base, which ranked 20th in baseball. That was because Triston Casas missed nearly 100 games, and he wasn’t all the way back to 100% when he did play. A healthy Casas would push the Red Sox from the bottom half of the league to the top half at first base.
At second base, the Red Sox ran a shockingly low 45 wRC+ in 2024. That was worst in baseball by a mile. I cannot begin to express to you how bad that is. According to FanGraphs, Boston’s second basemen cost the team 38 runs on offense. No other team was even below 25 runs. Kristian Campbell is a rookie, and he might really struggle for a while, but he’s definitely not going to be that bad. The projection systems uniformly see him as a solidly above-average hitter, but even if he’s just somewhere slightly below average, that will constitute an enormous improvement.
I suspect the Red Sox will take a small step back at shortstop. In 2024, Boston’s shortstops ran a 108 wRC+, 12th-best in baseball. For some reason, David Hamilton, Nick Sogard, Romy Gonzalez, and Ceddanne Rafaela all hit much better when they were playing shortstop than when they played anywhere else. Seriously, it’s freaky.
| Name | Shortstop | Elsewhere | Difference |
| Nick Sogard | 168 | 60 | +108 |
| David Hamilton | 118 | 76 | +42 |
| Romy Gonzalez | 117 | 94 | +23 |
| Ceddanne Rafaela | 101 | 68 | +33 |
That’s just plain random chance, but it ended up giving the Red Sox excellent offense at shortstop. We definitely shouldn’t expect Trevor Story to put up a 108 wRC+. The last time he put up a solidly above-average season at the plate was the 2020 season. Since then, he’s missed a lot of time, of course, but when he’s been on the field, he’s run a 92 wRC+. I don’t think we can hope for much more than a league-average bat from Story. If he combines that with league-average performance at short, that still makes him a valuable piece, but it seems unreasonable to ask for more.
Catcher is a real danger zone. Connor Wong ran some extremely unsustainable numbers last season, getting a lot of batted ball luck. He almost certainly won’t hit that well again, and behind him, we really have no idea what to expect offensively from Carlos Narváez. Narváez has never hit particularly well in the minors, and the projection systems see him with a wRC+ in the 70 to 80 range. The team can survive that if his defense is as fantastic as advertised, but the Red Sox are almost certainly going to take a step back offensively in the catcher spot.
We should also expect some major regression from Jarren Duran, Abreu, and Refsnyder. Duran had an incredible breakout season and his recognition as an MVP candidate was well-deserved, Abreu had an incredible rookie campaign, and Refsnyder really seemed to figure things out at the plate. However, all three players put up some really unexpected numbers, and when that happens, people usually come back down to earth the next season. That’s not an immutable law; it’s certainly possible that they’ll keep right on hitting, but expecting two or three of them to do so really seems like too much to ask.
So far the Red Sox have just a 66 wRC+, and a .194 batting average, but as they're just four games into the season, it's way too early to start worrying. It's extremely encouraging that Abreu and Campbell have gotten off to such hot starts. Although Devers is struggling mightily, he's one of the best hitters in baseball. He'll figure it out. In all, the Red Sox scored 751 runs last season, or 4.64 per game. FanGraphs’ projections see them scoring 747 runs this season, or 4.61 per game. The infield should hit better, but catcher and outfield should see big steps back. Basically, after all this offseason work, the Red Sox have ended up with an offense that projects to be just about identical to last year’s. But hey, at least the lineup is finally balanced!
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