Why The Red Sox Pitching Staff Still Gives Them A Fighting Chance In 2025

If we can forget about the start to Houck's 2025 season, the top 7 or 8 guys  we have on the IL are better than some team's best 8 pitchers, right now.

Houck, Crawford, Sandoval, Murphy (Perales/Drohan)

Slaten, Winckowski, Burdi, Hendriks (Webb)

On the active roster, only Buehler is stinking up our rotation of Crochet, Dobbins, Bello & Gio. We have a pretty solid top 4 in the pen: Chapman, Whitlock, Wilson and gasp... Weissert. The bottom 4 could use a serious upgrade: Bernardino (too up and down) Guerrero (maybe not quite ML ready) Kelly (about used up his leash length) and Alcara (fill in the blank on our 8th pen slot)

5 hours ago, Daniel Fox said:

It’s hard to believe that the afternoon of June 15, 2025, could have been considered one of the highest points of Red Sox baseball in the past four years. 

After stumbling through the first two months of the season and suffering through a brutal and humiliating May, the Red Sox finally caught fire at the beginning of June. After taking the final two contests in Yankee Stadium and winning a series against the Tampa Bay Rays, the Red Sox played their best baseball of the season on this fateful weekend against the first-place New York Yankees. The starting pitchers combined to allow just one run over 20 ⅓ innings, the bullpen and defense were nearly flawless, and the offense did just enough to scratch out three wins against their archrivals. The Red Sox’s eighth win in their last ten games pushed them into a tie for the third Wild Card spot, and with Alex Bregman, Wilyer Abreu, and Justin Slaten set to return in the coming weeks, the club looked primed for a playoff push. 

Yet, in one tweet from Robert Murray, every bit of optimism and good vibes disappeared, buried beneath the circus that has become the Red Sox front office. In one of the most shocking trades in recent sports memory, the Red Sox traded superstar Rafael Devers to the San Francisco Giants for right-handed reliever Jordan Hicks, left-handed starter Kyle Harrison, outfield prospect James Tibbs, and pitching prospect Jose Bello. 

 

Much of the past day has been spent trying to evaluate what went wrong in this saga and where to assign the blame (something I dove into in my article earlier this week), but as difficult as it may seem to believe, the Red Sox still have 88 games left to play in 2025. Losing Devers is a crushing blow and a slap in the face to the fanbase, but it does not mean that all is lost for the 2025 Red Sox.

Now, I’m not going to go full Craig Breslow and say the Red Sox are a better team without Devers. An unproven 23-year-old starting pitcher and an oft-injured volatile reliever are not going to replace a top-ten hitter in the sport. What I will tell you, however, is that all hope is not lost, and that has a lot to do with their pitching staff. This last turn through the rotation (prior to Buehler's start against the Mariners) has displayed what the Red Sox are capable of, as Lucas Giolito, Walker Buehler, Garrett Crochet, Hunter Dobbins, and Brayan Bello combined to allow five runs in 40.1 innings (1.32 ERA). The headliner, of course, is Garrett Crochet, who has given the Red Sox an ace they haven’t had since the days of prime Chris Sale. Friday night may have been his finest hour, as he bullied the Yankees for 8 1/3 frames before Aaron Judge finally ran into a 100 mph fastball. 

While Crochet’s near shutout of the Yankees was the most impressive outing of the weekend, don’t overlook the significance of Bello’s seven scoreless frames. Besides just the box score, Bello finally looked like the guy the Red Sox thought they were getting when they signed him to a six-year extension before the 2024 season. He threw his new-look cutter more than any other pitch and finally found a feel for his once-dominant changeup, allowing him to neutralize the Yankees' lefty-heavy lineup. Even with some maddeningly frustrating starts, Bello now has a career-low 3.49 ERA through his first 11 starts, and his re-worked pitch mix provides hope that the best may be yet to come. 

While Bello has often seemed weighed down by the massive expectations thrust upon his shoulders, Dobbins has exceeded even the most optimistic of projections in 2025. Once thought to be an up-and-down depth starter, Dobbins has excelled this season due to his ability to throw strikes with all five of his pitches. His 4.8 BB% ranks in the 92nd percentile among all qualified starters, and though his strikeout rate is below average, his 3.74 ERA has been exactly what the Red Sox needed, and his 3.67 FIP shows that it might be sustainable.

Perhaps overshadowed by the three under-26 members of the rotation, the veteran Giolito and Buehler both bounced back from recent disasters to turn in quality starts against the Rays (though Buehler did just get lit up again by the Mariners). Though neither should be expected to recapture the dominance of yesteryear, they each displayed a pathway to being productive mid-rotation starters. For Giolito, his rebound start was buoyed by better command of his slider and changeup, which allowed him to get better results off his fastball. He continued his dominance into his start against the Mariners, bullying them with a resurgent fastball and finishing off his 10 strikeouts with an array of wipeout sliders and changeups. Buehler, meanwhile, threw his sinker more often than ever before, a wise decision considering it has held batters to a .116 batting average and a .140 slugging percentage. Though both pitchers have a propensity to give up loud contact, their ability to adapt gives them a fighting chance despite their stuff not being as good as it has been in recent years. 

And as good as the rotation has been in the last week, it is the bullpen that truly gives me hope that this team can stay in the playoff race. Not since 2017 have the Red Sox had such a deep and versatile bullpen, and like that 2017 team, the relief corps is led by a Hall-of-Fame closer having one of his best seasons. At age 37, Aroldis Chapman has posted a career-low 2.8 BB/9 while still regularly hitting triple-digits with his fastball. Like Craig Kimbrel, Chapman's newfound strike-throwing ability has made him nearly unhittable, as he has converted 12 of 13 save opportunities to go along with a 1.55 ERA.

Though not quite as flashy as Chapman, the performance of the middle relief corps has proved invaluable to the Red Sox's recent stretch of winning tight, low-scoring games. Greg Weissert has taken on the primary set-up man in the absence of Justin Slaten and has allowed just three runs in his last 15 appearances. Garrett Whitlock, meanwhile, has turned a corner after a disastrous stretch at the beginning of May, allowing just a single run over his last 16 innings. Finally, Justin Wilson has settled in nicely to the second-lefty role, posting a 2.25 ERA with 30 strikeouts in just 24 innings. 

Even more encouraging is the fact that there is a pathway for the pitching staff to get even better. With Harrison now in the mix and Tanner Houck set for his first rehab start, the Red Sox will have options should one of their starters succumb to injuries or ineffectiveness. And while Hicks has failed to make the leap from reliever to starter, he still has the stuff to be effective in a one-inning role. Adding Hicks and eventually Slaten to a bullpen led by Weissert, Wilson, Chapman, and Slaten has a chance to give the Red Sox one of the deepest groups of relievers in the game. 

The past half-decade of Red Sox baseball has been defined by a potent offense trying desperately to overcome a weak pitching staff. Though overshadowed by the Devers saga and the call-up of the Big 3, the Andrew Bailey and Craig Breslow renewed focus on pitching has finally begun to pay dividends. The Red Sox's 3.96 team ERA is their lowest mark since 2018, and there are signs that the best may be yet to come. The Devers trade is a massive blow to the team’s offensive production and postseason chances, but there is simply too much good on the pitching side of the ball to throw in the towel on the 2025 Red Sox.

 

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Could not agree more that the current look at Sox pitching is pretty positive and that they can make a huge difference for the Sox.

 I'm not as ready as you to claim Devers' departure is a disaster.  I say that while agreeing that he is among the ten best hitters in MLB right now.   What you seem to have forgotten is that Bregman and Abreu are also out and will return.  When they do and when Yoshida returns, moonslav points out that Cora will be able to alternate Ref and Yoshida at DH.   I like Toro at 1b, Story or Mayer at 2b, Mayer or Story at SS, Bregman at 3b, and an outfield of Abreu, Duran, Rafaela, and Anthony.  Plus Narvaez at catcher.  I think that's a pretty good lineup.  

42 minutes ago, Maxbialystock said:

Could not agree more that the current look at Sox pitching is pretty positive and that they can make a huge difference for the Sox.

 I'm not as ready as you to claim Devers' departure is a disaster.  I say that while agreeing that he is among the ten best hitters in MLB right now.   What you seem to have forgotten is that Bregman and Abreu are also out and will return.  When they do and when Yoshida returns, moonslav points out that Cora will be able to alternate Ref and Yoshida at DH.   I like Toro at 1b, Story or Mayer at 2b, Mayer or Story at SS, Bregman at 3b, and an outfield of Abreu, Duran, Rafaela, and Anthony.  Plus Narvaez at catcher.  I think that's a pretty good lineup.  

Max, why does the last 6 games matter for the pitching staff but not for Toro?