Soxprospects.com lists the Sox making the following additions:
1 SP (but they count Erod as being active for the 2021 team, which is not a guarantee)
2 RP
1 2B
1 CF (they highlight Bradley)
1 LHH for the bench (And former Bloom acquisition Brad Miller is a perfect fit)
They include Arroyo an Munoz as bench players. Obviously, either or both could be economical solutions at 2B, and each with some risk.
Per Fangraphs, the Sox are 4th in MLB in E-F, which is ERA - FIP. And they have a number of pitchers with significantly worse ERAs than FIPs, iunclduing Mazza, Covey and Stockj. (Brice, too, but his FIP still sucks, unlike the other 3). So will this be a factor? Ther e are 3 ways to interpret this.
1. The Sox pitching might not be as bad, but a lot of them were victims of weak defensive play.
2. FIP is useless. (Which might be true, but won't matter if Bloom has faith in it.)
3. The sample size was just too small for this to matter.
If the Sox operate under the pretense of option 1, and they need to improve some defense, they might not be so quick to hand 2B over to Arroyo/Munoz, and they might be more likely to bring Bradley back, as his defensive metrics increased this year, possibly due to the Notin Theory from last year that they would with the departure of Betts. Or maybe for some other reason, although that his cumulative DRS went up in a significantly shorter season might be a good indicator...