Three Big Red Sox Surprises From the First Half of the 2025 Season

With the second half of the baseball season about to kick off on Friday, it’s a good time to look back on the first half for the Boston Red Sox. A season that was filled with so much hope and expectations at the onset has instead gone through a lot of twists and turns. The team once looked dead in the water before catching fire in June, only to then trade their face of the franchise, Rafael Devers. Since then, however, the team has been one of the best in baseball and is now in a playoff position, showing that anything is possible in a sport where 162 games are played. So, in what's been a season full of surprises, let's reflect on some of the most surprising performances from the roster in the first half.

1) First base didn’t become a black hole offensively after Triston Casas was lost for the season.

Everyone remembers the moment on May 2 when Casas went down, rupturing his left patellar tendon as he sprinted to first base. His season was lost, and the Red Sox now faced a hole at a position where they lacked much depth. On the roster was Romy González, the team’s de facto backup first baseman who had mainly played third base or either of the middle infield positions in prior years. Joining him as what many thought would be a temporary basis at first was Abraham Toro. Toro had been signed to a minor league contract and attended spring training with the Sox, but had been killing it with Worcester at the time of his contract being selected.

The two found themselves in a planned platoon where it seemed González would start against left-handed pitchers and Toro would start against right-handed pitchers. It didn’t last for long, as González found himself on the injured list shortly after on May 7 due to a left quad contusion after colliding with Josh Smith of the Texas Rangers at first base. In his absence, Toro and Nick Sogard stepped up, where the latter appeared in 17 games in May, hitting .296/.296/.537 with four doubles, three home runs and five RBIs.

Toro’s hot hitting continued into June where he continued to play well, splitting time between first and third base following an injury to Alex Bregman and the return of González. In 25 games in June, Toro slashed .279/.354/.407 with five doubles, two home runs and 11 RBIs. In that same span, González also caught fire at the plate, as he hit .300/.333/.583 with six doubles, a triple, three home runs and 13 RBIs in 18 games.

In July, however, Toro has started to fall off a little, as his production has dipped to a slash line of .216/.275/.270 with two doubles and four RBIs. The dip in production, however, has been covered by González, as he’s only gotten hotter once the calendar flipped. In nine games in July, he’s hitting .414/.424/.862 with three doubles, two triples, two home runs and nine RBIs.

The platoon may not be perfect, but given the Red Sox were in early May with injuries leaving them scrambling for a first baseman, the team has done well with the combination of Toro and González handling the position.

2) Brayan Bello and Lucas Giolito turned their seasons around after rough starts to the year.

Entering the season, there were a lot of question marks surrounding the rotation after Garrett Crochet. No one knew if Tanner Houck would replicate his All-Star season or if Kutter Crawford was going to be ready as he dealt with a knee issue in spring training. There were even concerns over which Walker Buehler the team was going to get, the one who struggled in the regular season or who had three decent outings in the playoffs. Though, what may have been the biggest question marks were Bello and Giolito, as both were behind schedule in spring training and were set to open the season on the injured list. Upon their returns, neither was much to write home about; Bello pitched twice in April, managing to avoid painful innings as he worked around runners on base, while Giolito only pitched once, a six-inning, three-run performance which anyone would take after he missed all of 2024.

However, it seemed to be deceiving for both, as Bello would then start six games in May, his ERA for the month finishing at 4.03 along with a 1.69 WHIP thanks in part to 33 hits and 16 walks in only 29 innings. His worst outing came against the Atlanta Braves, where he allowed seven earned runs on ten hits and five walks in only 4 1/3 innings. Giolito wasn’t much better in May, starting five games but posting an ERA of 4.85 as he allowed 14 runs on 31 hits and eight walks. Giolito's issues were more about inconsistency, as he would have a good outing followed by a rough one, the worst of the season being on June 4 where he lasted just 1 2/3 innings and allowed seven earned runs on eight hits. His ERA on the season ballooned to 6.42 after the start.

Since those two rough outings for both pitchers, they’ve seen incredible turn arounds. For Bello, he really seemed to catch fire on June 3 against the Los Angeles Angels where he went six innings and allowed only three runs. Since then, he’s gone at least six innings in every game, including a complete game against the Colorado Rockies on July 8 (the exception to that was when he pitched five innings out of the bullpen for a game being resumed in the fourth inning after being suspended due to rain). Since the start of June, Bello has seen his ERA drop from 3.91 all the way to 3.14, while his FIP has also dropped from 4.82 down to 4.21 as he’s severely cut down on the free passes he allows. Across June and July, Bello walked a combined 12 batters; in May, that number was 16.

Giolito has also seen an increase in performance, being tied to his increase in fastball usage. Since his blowup on June 4, Giolito has gone at least six innings every start, having not allowed more than two earned runs in any of them. His ERA dropped from 6.42 at the start of June down to 3.36 heading into the second half, while he also lowered his FIP from 4.78 down to 3.62. Much like Bello, Giolito is limiting baserunners, as he’s only walked more than one batter in a start just three times, the most being three batters. Likewise, the most hits he’s given up has been six. Since his disastrous outing against the Angels, Giolito has only allowed three earned runs across 38 2/3 innings, and he’s cemented himself as one of the top pitchers in the rotation.

With Bello and Giolito pitching to their potential, it helps strengthen a rotation that has seen injuries to several pitchers, including losing Hunter Dobbins for the season to a torn ACL.

3) Ceddanne Rafaela may get some down-ballot MVP love.

Everyone knew Rafaela was a defensive phenomenon out in center field, making impossible plays look routine. However, his bat was always more of a question mark, as he was a streaky hitter that would be overly aggressive at the plate, swinging at the first pitch or chasing often out of the strike zone.

That suddenly changed for Rafaela after a road trip in Milwaukee that left the center fielder hitting .232/.283/.356 on the season. The final game of that series saw Rafaela go 3-for-5 with a home run and was the second game of an eight-game hitting streak. It concluded with a walk-off home run that is the shortest in the history of the Statcast era (303 feet off the Pesky Pole) that saw his numbers rise to .252/.296/.411 on the season.

The key difference is the manner in which he’s hitting the ball. Since the end of May, the team wanted him to start pulling the ball more in the air and because of it, he’s exploded. In 26 June games, he would go on to hit .283/.327/.543 with six doubles, six home runs and 13 RBI. Those numbers only increased in 11 July games (so far) where he’s hit .390/.405/.902 with six doubles, five home runs and 15 RBIs to go along with his usual stellar defense.

Manager Alex Cora also had gotten on Rafaela about pulling the ball more, saying to MassLive's Sean McAdams “In this ballpark, especially, he needs to pull the ball. I used to joke around about Mookie (Betts) – there was a year when he was crushing the ball to right-center. It looked awesome, pretty, but it was an out. Kind of like the same thing with (Rafaela) – he can crush the ball to right-center, but in this venue (you don’t get rewarded).”

Rafaela, however, doesn’t think that pulling it is the reason for his success, saying “It’s not really pulling the ball more. It’s just that when I hit it to the pull side, I elevate the ball in the air. I stay with my approach to the middle of the field and I let it happen by itself.”

With this new approach, Rafaela has become a spark plug in the lineup and has won the team a few games with two walk-offs, one against the Angels and another just recently against the Rays in the final series of the first half. His offensive explosion has been a positive addition to a Red Sox team that has gone good lengths this season struggling to score runs. And, with the team beginning to get healthy again, he could have plenty of RBI opportunities with runners on base ahead of him.

Should his productive hitting continue, Rafaela may earn some lower-end MVP votes in a similar fashion to how Jarren Duran earned them at the end of 2024 where he finished eighth.

The 2025 season hasn’t gone exactly as Red Sox fans hoped it would so far, but the team wrapped up the first half on a hot stretch. With the trade deadline on the horizon, Boston may be gearing up for its best season in quite some time.