Alex Mayes

As spring training gets underway, we thought another fresh Opening Day roster projection was in order. Almost exactly two months ago, I wrote the first Opening Day Roster Projection here on Talk Sox and people…. I had some thoughts about a certain lefty killer I left off the 26-man roster. Have I come to my senses? Do I actually hate Rob Refsynder? Will I accidentally list Justin Slaten twice?! Let’s find out together. Lineup Jarren Duran, LF Rafael Devers, DH Alex Bregman, 3B Triston Casas, 1B Trevor Story, SS Roman Anthony, RF Connor Wong, C Ceddanne Rafaela, CF David Hamilton, 2B I’ve swapped one rookie for another in this project. Kristian Campbell doesn’t seem to be the frontrunner for the starting job at second, while a late start to spring training for Wilyer Abreu opens the door for Roman Anthony to begin the season with the big league club. There’s some debate about Anthony being able to stick in right field at Fenway Park. Still, I thought his starting there, instead of forcing him to learn how the Green Monster plays and Ceddanne Rafaela learning a new position in right, made more sense to begin the season. Should Anthony show shortcomings, people can shift around to accommodate him. However, if Abreu is ready for Opening Day or shortly afterward, he will roam right field again this season while Anthony gets more reps at Triple-A Worcester. David Hamilton appears to have the edge at second base during spring training and should lock in the starting job within the next week or so. Bench Carlos Narvaez, C Rob Refsnyder, OF Romy Gonzalez, Util Masataka Yoshida, OF/DH The elephant in the room is still Masataka Yoshida and his contract. The addition of Alex Bregman likely forces Alex Cora’s hand and shifts Devers to DH and Yoshida to the bench. He’s an expensive bench piece and will likely make late-game pinch-hitting appearances and occasionally show up in the starting lineup at DH. Still, if Bregman doesn’t play second base, there’s probably no other option. Rob Refsnyder should slot in as a platoon partner with Abreu, while Gonzalez can slot in most places around the infield. Should Devers insist on playing third, which is possible, Bregman shifting to second would push Hamilton to the bench, and Yoshida would return to the starting DH role. Starting Rotation Garrett Crochet, LHP Tanner Houck, RHP Walker Buehler, RHP Lucas Giolito, RHP Brayan Bello, RHP There are a couple of changes from my last projection here. I’ve swapped Kutter Crawford for Richard Fitts and moved Brayan Bello to the fifth starter role, down from the third. Crawford will begin the year on the Injured List and could be out for much of the season if his knee injury continues to be bothersome. The shift downward for Bello isn’t because of anything major or me not believing in him; you won’t find a bigger Bello fan than myself; it’s because he’s gotten off to a later start to spring training and slotting him in later in the starting rotation gives him a couple of extra days to get acclimated. Should he show up and show out in spring training, though, he slides right back to my original placement of third in the rotation. Bullpen Aroldis Chapman, LHP Liam Hendriks, RHP Justin Slaten, RHP Garrett Whitlock, RHP Richard Fitts, RHP Justin Wilson, RHP Luis Guerrero, RHP Adam Ottavino, RHP There are some changes here as well. Richard Fitts has been electric this spring training and has earned his way into the starting rotation conversation. Still, Alex Cora put the kibosh on any six-man rotation talk earlier during spring training. Fitts best fits (I’m so sorry, Davy) in a long-relief role to begin the season as a long reliever, allowing him to showcase his pitch mix and increased velocity through the middle innings. I’ve also given the roster nod to veteran Adam Ottavino over guys like Brennan Bernardino or *shudders* Josh Winckowski. Neither have a place on the major league roster over someone like Ottavino, who knows what it’s like to pitch in Boston during a successful season and can be a veteran ear for the younger members of the bullpen. We’ll have another roster projection closer to Opening Day, so keep an eye out for that as we get closer to the best day of the year. What are your thoughts on this projection? Can Campbell play his way back into the second-base conversation? Will Devers come around to playing DH to accommodate a Gold Glove-winning third baseman on the roster? What if Marcelo Mayer continues tearing up spring training? Let us know in the comments! View full article

Luis Guerrero showed up late last season and turned some heads. Can he be counted on to step into a higher-leverage role in 2025? Luis Guerrero was a surprising bright spot in the late 2024 season bullpen. He appeared in nine games, throwing ten innings with a zero ERA, nine strikeouts, and a 0.80 WHIP. He came up for a cup of coffee with the big league team and showed he had enough potential to be an essential piece of the 2025 bullpen. So far in spring training, he has looked mostly the part of an impact arm. He has appeared in four games with 3.1 innings pitched, seven strikeouts, a 1.80 WHIP, and sports a 5.40 ERA. He gave up two runs in a third of an inning to Pittsburgh in his latest outing, but it was the first time this spring that he had gone more than one inning in an appearance. As he stretches out to multi-inning relief appearances, he should be able to get through them without an issue. As you can see in the video below, his first outing of spring training gave us an excellent view of what we could expect in 2025. Guerrero sports a solid three-pitch mix, a four-seam slider, and a changeup that allows him to be effective against hitters on both sides of the plate. His fastball averages 97.5 MPH while his changeup averages 88.7, and the slider is a true putaway pitch when he’s hunting for strikeouts. Unlike starting rotation members, Guerrero doesn’t pitch to contact very often. He relies on his velocity to throw his fastball past hitters and the east/west break of his changeup and slider to get hitters to swing through them. What does Guerrero’s role for 2025 look like, though? Should his whiff rate continue to be at the level it was last year, over 40% according to CBS Sports, then it’s highly likely we’ll see Guerrero slot into a high-leverage relief role during the 2025 season. They even have him listed as a candidate to breakout for the Red Sox this season, something we all should hope happens. Some believe that Guerrero could end up in the closer role at some point in his career, and that doesn’t seem too farfetched. The Red Sox already have several closer candidates in the bullpen, but it is never bad to have someone young and electric eyeing the position soon. What do you expect from Guerrero in 2025? View full article

Two old friends have emerged as the likely candidates to start the season at second base. Entering spring training, the general consensus around the Red Sox was that there would be a fierce competition for the starting job at second base. So far we’ve started to see this play out, except not with the names that we expected. Instead of Alex Bregman and Kristian Campbell battling it out, we’ve seen both David Hamilton and Vaughn Grissom take big steps forward at the position. Campbell’s early struggles in camp have seen him get some time in left field, Bregman has rotated through third base and DH, and Hamilton and Grissom have split time at second. To date, Campbell has started two games at second and three in left, Hamilton has started four games at second and four at shortstop, and Grissom has started seven games at second. All of Bregman’s starts have either come at third or DH so far this spring. This should lead us to believe that the starting second baseman will come down to either Grissom or Hamilton. Let’s take a look and see if one player holds the edge over the other so far this spring and what this means for the player who does not get the starting job. Offensively, we’re looking at an incredibly small sample size so far. Grissom is slashing .125/.176/.125 while Hamilton is slashing .235/.350/.471, both through seven games, as of this writing. Those are…not stellar numbers, to put it mildly. As we talked about on the Talk Sox Podcast this week, both players showed up to camp in better shape with more muscle than last season, hopefully meaning both of them can stay healthy throughout an entire season. We’ve seen a bit of pop from Hamilton, and he's already hit one home run. Hamilton also takes another step forward for the job when consider his three stolen bases to Grissom’s zero. He’s walked three times to Grissom’s one, and he’s struck out twice to Grissom’s four. Once again, this is an incredibly small sample size, but the picture of the starting second baseman for the Boston Red Sox is starting to come a bit more into focus. Defensively, both Hamilton and Grissom have looked comfortable at second. Last season, the shift to second was the turning point in Hamilton’s season, when he became an impact player for the Red Sox. Keeping him at his natural position would give him the chance to succeed both offensively and defensively. Hamilton's late-season injury seemed to push him out of the minds of Red Sox fans. However he played 98 games and swiped 33 bases during that time. He posted 1.7 WAR which would rank him ninth in the AL among second basemen with at least 300 PAs. There's reason to believe that Hamilton's success in 2024 will carry over to 2025. What does this mean for Grissom? It’s a bit of a loaded question, considering the trade that brought Grissom here, but that’s not the point of this piece. Realistically, if the Red Sox think Hamilton is their starting second baseman in 2025, then we’re likely to see some sort of platoon. Hamilton will start against right-handed pitchers and Grissom will start against left-handed pitchers. Should Hamilton prove to be able to hit both righties and lefties, though, Grissom will be relegated to either a bench spot or sent back down to triple-A Worcester. If the Red Sox believe Kristian Campbell is the second baseman of the future, then Grissom likely will be forced to learn a new position entirely. He came through the Atlanta system as a shortstop, but that position appears to be filled for the next few seasons by Trevor Story, with Marcelo Mayer waiting in the wings. Third base could be the most likely option if Bregman does man the hot corner and then opts out at any point during his contract, with Rafael Devers DH'ing. However, the Red Sox are dangerously thin at first base behind Triston Casa,s so don’t be shocked if you see Grissom getting reps there in Worcester during the season. There are still a lot of roster questions to be answered during spring training, but Hamilton appears to have the edge when it comes to the starting second base job, at least for now. What that could mean for Vaughn Grissom is still up in the air, and is entirely dependent upon team needs. View full article

Spoiler Alert: Yes. If you’re a Talk Sox Podcast listener, you’re already well aware that I’ve been talking about the Red Sox and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. since the offseason began. I want them to trade for him, right now. Pay whatever price Toronto asks, get him here, and extend him. Make him the face of this franchise. But in my heart of hearts, did I actually believe the Boston Red Sox would be willing to bring in someone like Vlady? I want to say yes I did, but I had very little faith that John Henry would open up his wallet to pay a lot of money for a single player, even one who could alter the franchise trajectory by themselves. Considering how involved Boston was in the Juan Soto sweepstakes, I started to believe that maybe Henry’s mind was changing and he would be willing to overpay to get his guy. Then, the majority of the offseason was quiet. While I jokingly kept finding ways to bring Guerrero up on the podcast, I’ll admit that I had very little faith he could actually end up in Boston, despite the rumors he wants to play here. Outside of free agent deals to Trevor Story and Masataka Yoshida, there was no real reason to believe the Red Sox would pony up for someone who likely will cost over $400 million in free agency. But suddenly, around 9:30 Central on February 12, I was convinced. The Red Sox played the waiting game with Alex Bregman, much to the chagrin of the fanbase, but they signed their impact right-handed hitter to a three-year, $120-million contract. No, it’s not a $400 million contract, but it’s an overpay. The type of overpay that was necessary to make sure the Red Sox secured the player they wanted on their roster. It’s the exact type of overpay that leads me to believe that if Guerrero does indeed become a free agent, the Red Sox will actually be the frontrunners to sign him. The Bregman signing proved one other thing that to me bodes well for future big-name free agent signings. There had been rumors over the last couple of offseasons that free agents didn’t want to come to Boston. The thought was they’d take the same money, or less, to play elsewhere. However, Bregman had better offers on the table. He was able to see that the Red Sox are serious about getting back into contention, they invested in their weakest position group, and they have a top-tier farm system that should begin to pay dividends as soon as this season. Guerrero will see the exact same things next off-season. We can't forget that the Red Sox already have a first baseman who's a pretty good slugger in his own right. Bringing Guerrero into the fold would obviously make Triston Casas would be the odd man out. Guerrero would slot into the everyday first baseman role, making Casas expendable. Should he have a breakout season in 2025, Casas could be a prime trade chip, or he could even convince the Sox that they don't need a free agent first baseman after all. If Guerrero really does want to play in Boston, and he should because he’s a monster at Fenway Park, then the signing of Bregman gives me hope that John Henry will once again open his wallet for the type of player that will thrive in Boston. The Red Sox are a big market team and big market teams make impact free agent signings. Bregman was the first one, and Guerrero reaches free agency in 2025, whicn now seems like a certainty, the Red Sox would be foolish to let him call any other city but Boston home for a long time. View full article

Brennan Bernardino turned heads 2023, but after a solid start to 2024, he became a liability in the second half. What went wrong? Brennan Bernardino had a trying 2024. He started the year at triple-A Worcester only to be called up when injuries forced the Red Sox to add a left-handed reliever on April 9. He started the season on fire, carrying a 0.78 ERA his first 23 innings in Boston. Then the wheels fell off. Bernardino was shuffled to a low-leverage spot unless Alex Cora absolutely needed a left-hander. What went wrong last season? Let’s see if we can dig a bit to find out. Pitch Mix Changes Although Bernardino considers his breaking ball to be a curveball, his arm angle and movement profile essentially make him a classic sinker-slider guy with an east-west movement profile. His sinker averaged 15 inches of break to his glove side, while his curveball averaged nearly 17 inches of break to his arm side. In 2023, he posted a 3.20 ERA, a 1.30 WHIP, and a 3.41 FIP. He was reliable. You knew what you were getting when he came jogging in from the bullpen, but the pitch mix worked, and Bernardino's side-arm approach forced batters to beat the ball into the ground. In 2024, he kept the sinker and curveball while adding a cutter and a slider. The pitches were very similar in terms of both movement and velocity, and neither performed especially well. The cutter lived right in the heart of the zone and the slider sat squarely on the inside middle part of the plate. It wouldn’t be a huge stretch to say that adding focus on these two new pitches caused his main pitches to falter some. Pitch Location Issues In short, Bernardino couldn’t miss bats when he would attempt to nibble on the edges of the plate. His chase rate rose from 18.5% in 2023 to 23.5% in 2024 but his whiff rate on those chases fell from 50% to 33.6%. Even when he hit the edges of the zone, hitters were swinging more and making more contact. That forced him to try and throw a bit more over the heart of the plate with his newer pitches, and they got lit up there. The heat maps below show Bernardino's curveball location (courtesy of Baseball Savant). The left shows 2023, and you can see that Bernardino lived on the corner, down and away to lefties and down and in to righties. The right shows 2024, when Bernardino didn't seem to be executing any particular plan. The location of his curveball likely contributed a ton to his issues last year. Although it's less extreme, Bernardino's sinker showed a similar shift away from the corner and toward the middle of the zone. According to the pitch modeling metric Location+, Bernardino went from an above-average 102 in 2023 to a below-average 97 in 2024. Between the changes to his pitch mix and his location struggles, Brennan Bernardino went from the go-to left-handed reliever to the mop-up lefty. If he doesn't demonstrate improvement during spring training, it’s entirely likely that Brennan Bernardino is on the outside looking in again as the Red Sox start their season. View full article

Old (brief) friend Adam Ottavino is back in Boston. What does this mean for the Red Sox bullpen? In a bit of a surprising move, the Red Sox and free agent reliever Adam Ottavino are in agreement on a minor-league deal with an invite to camp, according to Jon Heyman. As with many minor-league deals for veteran players, Ottavino will make $2 million if he makes the big-league roster, but if he doesn't make the 40-man out of spring training, he has the chance to opt out and try to sign as a free agent with another team. The Red Sox and Ottavino are incredibly familiar with each other. Ottavino pitched in Boston in 2021, and was a crucial part of the bullpen during the team's ALCS run, allowing one earned run over five playoff appearances. He has spent the last three seasons with the Mets, running a combined 3.18 ERA over 192 appearances and 183 1/3 innings. Last season Ottavino posted a 4.34 ERA and 3.67 FIP while running an excellent 28.6% strikeout rate. He’s likely no longer the high-leverage arm he once was, but he adds another veteran presence to the bullpen, and between stints with the Yankees, Red Sox, and Mets, he has plenty of experience in the highest-pressure situations the game has to offer. In 2024, Ottavino fastball averaged just 93.2 mph, a career-low. His sweeper became his most used pitch, and he used it to play off his sinker incredibly well. Against righties, he threw the sweeper or sinker over 80% of the time; against lefties, he led with the sinker and mixed in the sweeper, four-seamer, cutter, and changeup. Last season he had a 44.4% ground ball rate, solid, but still his lowest since his time in Boston. The improved defense of Alex Bregman and Trevor Story up the middle should help him out quite a bit. While this likely was not the deal for a lights-out reliever fans were looking for, Ottavino makes the bullpen much scarier for opponents. He's a dependable arm who's thrown at least 50 innings in every full season since 2017. He's struck out at least one batter per inning in every season since 2015, and he runs solid groundball rates. Now the Red Sox have multiple late-inning veterans to mix and match with, not counting guys like Justin Slaten and Luis Guerrero who should be impactful relievers in their own rights. Last week, the Red Sox signaled to the league that they were serious about contending. Adding a veteran of Ottavino’s ilk is a big market move that could pay dividends. View full article

Appreciate the kind words.

Kutter Crawford was a dependable starter for the Red Sox in 2024, but he had some major flaws in starts. What went wrong last season, and what could go right in 2025? Kutter Crawford was a member of the “30 Start Boys” along with Tanner Houck and Brayan Bello in 2024. You knew that every fifth day, Crawford would take the ball and be able to post on his scheduled start day. What you were far less sure of, though, was whether he would turn in a quality start or serve up home runs on a silver platter to opposing hitters. Let’s look at what went wrong for Crawford in 2024 and how his 2025 season can rebound. What Went Wrong in 2024? Crawford's biggest issue last season was gifting the long ball to opposing hitters. However, there may be some explanation as to why that started happening. He recently told reporters in Fort Myers that he injured his patellar tendon during his third start of the 2024 season. He was covering first base, and as soon as he “hit the base, something happened. I just couldn’t put a whole lot of weight on it.” Due to a “couple hiccups” in his rehab during the offseason, his spring training has not ramped up to the level of other pitchers. Not being able to put weight on his right leg limited the push-off he could have from the mound, causing his velocity to drop over the season. Crawford's fastball was down a full mile per hour from 2023 (93.6) to 2024 (92.6). The biggest difference we see is a change in his slugging percentage. In 2023, Crawford came in with a .388 slugging percentage against. Not great, but compared to 2024’s number, .412, that .388 seems like a dream situation. He gave up a lot of hard contact in 2024. The other pitches also suffered when he lost a full MPH on his fastball. Opposing hitters were able to sit and wait on pitches they wanted as none of his stuff had ticked up, and they could hunt his fastball, which lives high in the zone most of the time. What Could Go Right in 2025? This is a bit of a loaded question, as patellar tendon injuries tend to linger and could require surgery. Should Crawford continue to experience pain and discomfort in that knee, we could see him shut down for the bulk of 2025. Luckily, the Red Sox have a much deeper rotation and can stand to weather that storm should they have to. However, I think the thing that can go absolutely right for Crawford in 2025 lies in him upping his splitter usage. He didn’t throw it a ton in 2024, just nine percent of the time, but it clocks in at a full four MPH slower than the MLB average splitter, and with the correct movement, it tumbles from high in the zone to low. Hitters are more likely to swing over the top of a splitter when it starts where a typical four-seam fastball lives but then drops to the bottom of the zone. The strikeout percentage on the splitter was almost 20 points higher than his fastball, 41.3% versus 25.4%. Incorporating the splitter into his arsenal should help him induce more ground balls, bringing his hard-hit and slugging percentage back down to earth. There are many questions about Kutter Crawford’s availability heading into the 2025 season. However, if his knee holds up, having him as the sixth option for the rotation or the long man in the bullpen should mean great things for the Red Sox rotation this season. View full article

With better offers on the table, why did Alex Bregman decide to sign with Boston? Last night, the Boston media market was flooded with reports that the Red Sox and star third baseman Alex Bregman had agreed to a three-year, $120-million contract with opt-outs after the first two seasons. On the surface, this deal is incredibly surprising. It had been reported multiple times that Bregman and his agent, Scott Boras, were seeking a contract length of five to six years, a number it was assumed most teams were hesitant to give a player entering his age-31 season on a somewhat down note. However, it seems that at least two teams were willing to hand out a longer-term commitment to Bregman than the Red Sox. Bob Nightengale reported that the Cubs offered four years and $120 million, while Evan Petzold reported the Tigers offered six years and $171.5 million. With longer commitments, and more money sitting in front of him, what made Bregman choose to call Boston home for (possibly) the next three years? The Alex Cora Connection Alex Cora clearly wanted Alex Bregman in Boston. Cora never shied away from speaking about Bregman in the media, especially at Fenway Fest last month. Cora even mentioned he foresaw Bregman being a Gold Glove-caliber second baseman, the position he likely slots into as the roster currently stands. While there was speculation that the relationship between Cora and Bregman had soured after Cora left the Houston Astros, it’s obvious that the two hold a mutual respect. Sure, Detroit has A.J. Hinch, but Cora seems to be highly respected among former players. Plus, Boston has a couple other benefits that Detroit and Chicago couldn’t offer. Possible Number Bump As I’ve outlined before, Alex Bregman’s numbers faded during the 2024 season. However, if we look at his home game spray chart overlaid onto Fenway Park, we see a different story. Multiple outs have turned into either wall ball doubles or home runs and we even see a few outs in right field that would likely scrape over the short wall there. If we do the same to both Wrigley Field and Comerica Park, there are more doubles turned into outs than outs turned into home runs. Bregman is betting on himself to deliver some power numbers with the Red Sox and he should make the Green Monster his best friend in 2025. Dollars and Cents Let's make sure we appreciate how big the dollar values are here. Some of the money (we don't yet know how much) in Bregman's contract is been deferred, but it's important to remember that it will only be deferred for three years, meaning that the overall value of the contract probably won't be affected that much. Bregman's average annual value of $40 million ties him with Aaron Judge at sixth place on the list of highest AAV ever handed out. There's always a tradeoff: Players want long-term security, while teams don't want to be saddled with a big contract if things turn out badly. In exchange for taking this shorter deal, Bregman is getting paid like one of the absolute best players in the game. The opt-outs also increase the value of the deal in a big way. If he puts up a tremendous season and thinks he can beat these terms, Bregman can go right back on the market and look for a long-term deal once again. This is an extremely valuable deal. A Promising Young Core The Red Sox have one of the top-ranked farm systems in baseball, with three top prospects knocking on the door to the majors. They just made a major trade for a likely playoff game one starter with Garrett Crochet and brought in another World Series champion in Walker Buehler. The front office finally seems serious about winning and believes in the young core to help push the team over the edge. Adding a veteran presence and clubhouse leader like Bregman gives that core someone strong to lean on and listen to while they develop into their own as baseball players. The Red Sox are young and about to get younger. If the prospects even sniff half of what they are believed to be able to accomplish early in their careers, that had to look very enticing to someone like Bregman. While the deal seemed to come out of nowhere on Wednesday night, adding Bregman on a three-year deal makes a lot of sense. He turned down longer (and likely more profitable) contracts in places that don’t fit his play style as well. For the Red Sox, this deal is the clearest indicator we've seen that finally, winning is at the forefront of the decision-making process. View full article

Craig Breslow recently sat down for a podcast interview. Now, it's time to look at some quotes and dive into what they meant. On Friday, Craig Breslow sat down with Sean McAdam and Chris Cotillo from Masslive.com on their Fenway Rundown podcast and answered several questions over the 20-minute interview. Although he couldn’t get into details on thoughts on specific players, he touched on the current right-handed hitter situation, the bullpen, and the future of the team as a whole. Let’s take a look at some of his quotes. I decided to start here, and we’ll jump around the interview a bit so that related quotes will be grouped. This is an excellent insight into how the team operates when looking at players like Alex Bregman and Nolan Arenado. It’s been reported multiple times that Bregman is looking for a contract for at least six years. It’s also been discussed how the Red Sox, so far, haven’t been willing to go that long on an offer. If there’s belief in the young core, more on that in a second, then signing Bregman for the 2025 season makes sense, but locking him up long-term just creates more positional log jams very shortly. At this point, I wouldn’t call Alex Bregman or Nolan Arenado, a difference-maker right-handed hitter. They would improve the defense in the infield, and metrics say that playing half of their games at Fenway would bring their numbers up, but once again, we’re looking at short-term improvements that don’t impact the team as the young core grows together. If the contention window isn’t wide open in 2025, adding either of these players doesn’t make much sense. The hope is that the team is in talks to trade for a right-handed hitter, but we’d have to imagine that most teams are not looking to move impact players right now as spring training is underway. Still, an addition later in the season would be welcomed. I was relieved to hear Craig say that he understood the growing criticisms because it shows that the team is at least still somewhat plugged into the fanbase and their feelings. I also agree with him that the team has taken a significant step forward this offseason, thanks to the additions of Garrett Crochet and Walker Buehler. Even the additions of Patrick Sandoval, Justin Wilson, and Aroldis Chapman helped to push the Red Sox in the right direction throughout the season. Holes still need to be addressed, but the Red Sox should be a better team in 2025 than in 2024. Like most of the fanbase, the front office is excited to see what the top prospects in the system can contribute at the big-league level, but they seem to understand that placing such immense pressure on the young core could easily put them in a position where they feel as though they can’t succeed. That’s not to say these players don’t believe in themselves; they absolutely do, and I firmly believe that they would step into whatever role they were asked to with ease and be successful, but having other players in place to ease the young group into the majors could be a great path forward. It would give them veterans to lean on and learn from while allowing them to grow into themselves as baseball players. It’s nice to hear that the Red Sox are still looking for bullpen upgrades, but with pitchers and catchers reporting next week, the options on the free-agent market are thin. You’d have to imagine that if teams are unwilling to talk trades for position players, trades for relievers are even more unlikely. The Red Sox are counting on outside additions of Chapman and Wilson to help stabilize the bullpen while young pitchers like Justin Slaten and Luis Guerrero take the next step forward. Garrett Whitlock returns to 2021 reliever form after coming off an internal bracing procedure, hoping Liam Hendriks can be a lights-out closer again. That’s…a lot of counting on things that could easily fall apart early in the season. In some way, an additional impact arm will be crucial for Boston if they want to play into October this season. This is a factual statement; the infield did seem calmer once Story returned to the lineup to close the season in 2024. However, counting on Story as the everyday shortstop seems shortsighted, as he hasn’t been able to stay healthy since landing in Boston in 2022. They’ve been freak injuries, but the point still stands. I would love to see a healthy Story all year who can mentor the young infield, but I’ll still err on the side of caution here. Story can be an impactful veteran, especially if his bat starts to come back around, and can be incredibly useful as a clubhouse leader. We’re counting on him staying healthy for that to happen, and so far, he hasn’t been healthy in Boston. All in all, Craig Breslow handled the interview well. He didn’t get into a ton of technical terminology that would leave the listeners lost, and he took ownership of some of the shortcomings of the offseason. As Red Sox fans, we all want to see our favorite team do more in the offseason, but sometimes deals don’t get to the finish line, and the Dodgers make a better offer because they’re the Dodgers. Breslow is correct when he says that the offseason's true grade comes at the season's end. Should the Red Sox surprise everyone, make a run at the division title, and make some noise in the playoffs, I think we’ll all look back on this offseason in a far more positive light. View full article

The Red Sox improved a lot this offseason but in the AL East, is it enough? Alex, Adam, and Maddie break down PECOTA’s projected standings for the AL East and the discrepancies in the front office regarding the team’s current needs. They also discuss their expectations of player performances for this year and review their potential travel plans to see the Red Sox. Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-talk-sox-podcast/id1783204104 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3qPrPXEngu0CxgTmlf0ynm Listen on iHeartRadio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-the-talk-sox-podcast-244591331/ Listen on Pocket Casts: https://pca.st/4tmd121v Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@talksox View full article

It seems as if the Red Sox are counting on Rob Refsynder to take meaningful at bats against both left- and right-handed pitchers in 2025. Should this be the plan as spring training draws near? I already know what the first few comments will say, and yes, I did leave Rob Refsnyder off my first 2025 Red Sox roster projection. I made my case for that decision in the comments, and I was hoping Boston’s group of right-handed hitters would look different. They don’t, so I’m sorry Rob. If I could go back, I’d slot you right in the lineup for Opening Day at DH, much like Jen McCaffrey did, due to the chance Masataka Yoshida isn’t ready to face big league pitching yet. With the roster being mostly unchanged, though, I started wondering just what Refsnyder’s role with the 2025 Red Sox would be since he played out of his mind in 2024. In 2024, Refsnyder slashed .283/.359/.471 for a 130 wRC+, which is a huge increase from his 2023 mark of 93. It became obvious throughout the season that Alex Cora trusted Refsnyder to face left-handed pitching more than he trusted Wilyer Abreu, and Refsnyder rewarded that trust time and time again. In fact, he has become known as the lefty killer amongst the fanbase. Had the Red Sox signed another right-handed bat, Refsnyder would have been expected to contribute off the bench and pinch-hit against lefties when necessary. Now, though, I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility that Refsynder is the starting DH for the Red Sox to begin the season. In the short term, this likely will work out fine. Refsnyder isn’t allergic to hitting right-handed pitching or anything, but his strength is obviously against lefties. This would allow Abreu to see more left-handed pitching, although I agree with Davy Andrews that this may not be the best foot forward to begin the season, and I would get Refsnyder more at-bats. In the long-term, though, Refsnyder is a mostly soft-hitting platoon player, and putting him at DH likely doesn’t bode well for the 2025 season. He did hit 11 home runs in 2024, but shouldn’t you expect quite a bit more out of the DH spot than that? Refsnyder’s role hinges on Masataka Yoshida’s health. If Yoshida is able to start the season as the DH, then Refsnyder slides back into his role as a platoon outfielder with Wilyer Abreu and all is right with the world — at least as right as it can be without more additions to the roster . Should Yoshida have to start the season on the IL, Refsndyer is likely the first man up as DH, and that could mean the Red Sox aren’t nearly as competitive as we hoped. View full article

Brayan Bello had an incredibly up and down season in 2024. Reintroducing his worst pitch of 2023 seemed to unlock something in him. The 2024 season got off to a rough start for Brayan Bello, but it ended with him finding his groove and becoming the one Red Sox starter who could be counted on to toss solid innings every five days. I’ve written before about the first few months of Bello's season and the bounce-back process after Alex Cora gave him a few extra days rest before a July start in Miami. In that start, his four-seam fastball reemerged. It’s no secret that the Red Sox threw fewer fastballs than any team in baseball, saving them to mess with hitters' timing. This new approach worked for almost everyone in the starting rotation, but Bello started the season slow. He was knocked around quite a bit and seemed like he couldn’t find his footing with any of his pitches. What should have been a deadly combination of an above average slider and a nasty change up wasn’t working like it should have been. What was different to start the year in 2024? For one thing, Bello's arm angle rose throughout the season. The biggest change, however, came to his pitch mix. Bello completely scrapped his four-seam fastball to start off the season. In fact, he didn’t throw a single four-seamer until July. The reasoning behind it was fairly simple: it got hit hard in 2023. In 2023, Bello threw 540 four-seamers. The pitch gave up a below average 20% whiff rate and a disastrous .413 wOBA. It's not hard to see why he would scrap it completely. However, the it seems like the plan was always to reintroduce the pitch at some point during the season. That point came on July 3, 2024. Bello turned in his best start of the season against the lowly Miami Marlins, setting him up for success through the end of the season. The success didn’t lie specifically in the four-seam fastball, though. Adding that pitch back into his arsenal allowed his sinker and changeup to play off it. Suddenly, instead of sitting on and waiting for a sinker followed by a changeup with an occasional slider thrown in, batters had to take the four-seamer into account. Suddenly, instead of glimpses of the pitcher the Red Sox hoped Brayan Bello could be, we saw extended stretches of it. Reintroducing the four-seamer to his pitch mix allowed Bello to take the next step in his development. Should this continue, Bello will be heralded as the most successful homegrown Boston starter in quite some time. Hopefully, Tanner Houck can challenge him for that title, but that’s a conversation for a different article. View full article