Jordan Leandre

Tuesday night's loss to the Baltimore Orioles felt like a recent low for the Boston Red Sox. Every inning from the eighth through the tenth saw them load the bases and score zero runs in such situations en route to a 4-3, 11-inning loss. Squandering each of those opportunities is frustrating, but none more than when it happened the first time. Down 3-1 in the eighth inning, the Red Sox had bases loaded and nobody out with the heart of their order -- Jarren Duran, Trevor Story, and Masataka Yoshida -- due up. The Orioles countered the ordeal with right-hander Rico Garcia, who entered play with a 6.04 career ERA, and he struck out all three. Duran flailed at a changeup; Story the same at a slider; Yoshida got his doors blown off with a 97 mph fastball. All three equally guilty in bringing home nothing in that frame, but for Duran, it's a sign of a lingering issue defining a significant portion of his 2025 campaign. The Red Sox have eight players with 30 plate appearances or more in high-leverage situations this season, and Duran leads the team with 61 such plate appearances. He ranks last in wRC+ (27), wOBA (.214), extra-base hits (zero), and is sixth in runs batted in (10). He's also got the second-highest strikeout rate in those situations, trailing Story by 0.7 percent. However, Story has a 109 wRC+ and a team-leading 22 RBIs in high leverage. In the interest of fairness, Duran posted a 127 wRC+ in 51 high-leverage plate appearances last season, trailing only Tyler O'Neill and Ceddanne Rafaela with the same minimum requirement (30 PAs). He also carried a 13.7% walk rate with a 27.5% strikeout rate, which is nearly identical to his 13.1 and 26.2 in 2025. The main difference is Duran had a .467 batting average on balls in play last year compared to .229 in 2025. Sounds like a batted ball luck problem, yes? Well, not really. Duran had a hard-hit rate of 40.0% last year compared to 27.8% in 2025. Perhaps more staggering is that all of the hard contact went into soft contact -- 3.3% in 2024 into 16.7% this year. That said, it doesn't negate the fact Duran's OPS and wRC+ in medium and low-leverage spots is .826 and 124, respectively. Both rank fifth on the team, so perhaps not a world-beater, but certainly a very valuable hitter in those spots. As debates constantly linger about the long-term outlook of the Red Sox's outfield alongside Roman Anthony and Rafaela, Duran coming up small in high-leverage moments this frequently doesn't help his case to stay. Especially when compared to the other potential odd-man-out candidate, Wilyer Abreu, who leads the team with a .966 OPS and 137 wRC+ in high leverage. The right fielder is already a better defender and more stable power threat than Duran, so coming through more consistently in big spots in a relatively similar volume (47 plate appearances) only helps his case in addition to being considerably younger. At the end of the day, the sample sizes are still very small in the grand scheme of things, and it's not like Duran has been a repeat offender in the clutch. However, this is becoming a constant offensive deterrent for the Red Sox in a time of year where every individual result is magnified. It'd be nice -- for both Duran's sake and the Red Sox's playoff hopes -- if he could start delivering when it matters most. View full article

After 119 games with the Washington Nationals, first baseman Nathaniel Lowe was designated for assignment Thursday. It's been a tough year for the former World Series champion, who spent the past four seasons with the Texas Rangers, as he's slashing .216/.292/.373 with a career-low 89 wRC+. However, every year of his Rangers career, he posted at least 2.3 wins above replacement (per Baseball Reference). Considering the struggles of switch-hitting corner infielder Abraham Toro, along with questions surrounding the underlying data with Kristian Campbell, Lowe makes a lot of sense for the Boston Red Sox. For starters, he's an upgrade against right-handed pitchers from both Toro and Romy Gonzalez. Since the start of last season, Lowe has a 112 wRC+ against right-handed pitching, with Toro posting an 83 wR+ and Gonzalez a 62 wRC+. This year, the gap is less drastic, but Lowe still has a 104 mark versus the two current Red Sox being in the mid-80s.The power is more stable from the veteran lefty bat, as well. Every year since 2021, he's hit at least 16 home runs with 68 runs batted in -- both are his 2025 marks with six weeks remaining. Even though his average and on-base percentage are down, his isolated power is roughly his career average. Lowe also shined with the glove in his latter two seasons with the Rangers, posting 12 outs above average across 695 chances. While Gonzalez has broken out with his power stroke, just two of his home runs are against righties and he's struck out 24 times to just two walks. Moreover, one of the main criticisms of this Red Sox roster is its youth. While acknowledging that's also part of the intrigue, there's a lot of value in the institutional knowledge someone with World Series experience has. Lowe wasn't dominant en route to his 2023 ring, but he did hit big home runs in the back-half of a classic seven-game series with the Houston Astros in that ALCS. He's not foreign to the postseason, which is something not a whole lot of Red Sox position players can say at this point. In fact, Alex Bregman and Trevor Story are the only regular hitters with postseason experience (Rob Refsnyder had three plate appearances in the 2015 Wild Card Game with the Yankees). It feels somewhat lazy to say perhaps a change of scenery could benefit Lowe, but it's not exactly a mystery the dysfunction of the organization he's leaving. Following the July series with Boston, the Nationals fired manager Davey Martinez and general manager Mike Rizzo. This is also the same organization that has a tremendous young core of James Wood, C.J. Abrams and MacKenzie Gore and yet seem just as far from contention as they were before their debuts. The Nationals also just had a trade deadline to move off of pieces like Lowe, Josh Bell and Luis Garcia, yet only traded reliever Kyle Finnegan and outfielder Alex Call. It's a weird franchise, to say the least. Regardless, Lowe is owed the remainder of his $10.3 million salary for 2025, and any team that claims him would be on the hook for that. It's not a steep salary, but given his production this season, does a team like his chances of turning it around enough to pay him outright? If all teams are, in a vacuum, willing to take that chance, what are the chances the Red Sox even have the chance to place a claim on him? After all, Lowe has two former employers on the periphery of the Wild Card race, with the Rangers ranking 25th in first base wRC+ and the Tampa Bay Rays having lost All-Star Jonathan Aranda to a fractured wrist. Both squads have waiver priority over the Red Sox. That shouldn't keep Boston from trying to nab him, and if Lowe does end up in Fenway, the Red Sox's lineup could look that much deeper heading into October. View full article

Since June 13, Boston Red Sox first baseman Abraham Toro's season has taken a nosedive. Entering play that day, the switch-hitter had a .330/.354/.574 slash line with five homers and a 150 wRC+, emerging as a viable middle-of-the-lineup bat. That was through 99 plate appearances; since then, across his last 164, he's slashing .200/.274/.276 with two home runs and a 50 wRC+. This isn't a slump anymore—it accounts for over 60% of his volume at the big-league level in 2025. During that span, Toro has a hard-hit rate of 27 percent. Only five hitters in the majors this year have a lower hard-hit rate. Only seven hitters post a lower barrel rate this year than Toro's 3.3% since June 13 as well. The 28-year-old doesn't walk much, hasn't hit for power in almost two months, has -3 defensive runs saved and outs above average at first base and, among first basemen with at least 250 plate appearances, ranks 30th out of 34 with -0.4 fWAR. He's simply been relied upon too much and for too long despite not performing. When Opening Day first baseman Triston Casas ruptured his patellar tendon in early May, the Red Sox fan base went into a mass hysteria and begged Chief Baseball Officer Craig Breslow to get a viable replacement, because surviving the remaining 125 or so games seemed unlikely without legitimate production from the position. Unfortunately, steady production at first base isn't easy to find on May 2, so you have to patch together something and survive as long as possible. The platoon of Toro with Romy Gonzalez worked for a while, as they slashed a combined .267/.317/.447 as first basemen through July 30. Gonzalez fought off an early second-half slump, but he is now mired in basically a 50-50 split between first and second base since the injury to Marcelo Mayer. Meanwhile, Toro has a 39 wRC+ in 32 plate appearances since the trade deadline. With Kristian Campbell and top outfield prospect Jhostynxon Garcia getting reps at first base with Triple-A Worcester, it seems likely time is running out for Toro to turn his season around, but this falls back on Breslow for not truly prioritizing the first base position 11 days ago. Alex Speier of The Boston Globe reported the Red Sox hovered in the "due diligence" stage of the Josh Naylor sweepstakes. Naylor is slashing .288/.362/.577 with four homers in 15 games for Seattle. There wasn't a lot of smoke on the Ryan O'Hearn front for Boston either, but he had a .370 on-base percentage across his first eight games for San Diego. The sample size is still small enough since the deadline passed to not harp too much on these (what look like) early misses, but there's a lot of pressure on a myriad of players with no track record of sustained success deep into the season to be super productive in a pennant race. Maybe Campbell comes back and is April Campbell -- reminder, he slashed .301/.407/.495 through the first month of the season -- but there's also a real chance he isn't. Maybe Garcia continues to hammer the baseball and any potential deficiencies with the glove are negated ten-fold by his power, a la 2021 Kyle Schwarber, but the likelihood is that he doesn't in his first taste of big-league action. Therein lies the problem, though. That's two maybes, and neither player is actively on the big-league roster. To add a third, perhaps Mayer comes back and has no lingering wrist issues while Gonzalez moves to full-time first base and performs there. Again, it's possible, but the young infielder was hardly killing the ball before his injury, posting a .217 average in his last 29 games, and who's to say how long it takes for him to trust and/or tolerate the pain in his wrist. It goes back to the deadline, in which the Red Sox also traded a first base prospect in Blaze Jordan for left-hander Steven Matz. They didn't do enough to help the current iteration of the roster. To this point, it hasn't affected them too much (6-4 since the deadline), but it's hard to feel good about such a glaring weakness in the everyday lineup. View full article

Entering his start against the San Diego Padres, right-hander Walker Buehler’s tumultuous Boston Red Sox career appears to be closer to the end than its beginning. In 19 starts, the two-time World Series champion has a 5.74 ERA with less than five innings per start on average in 2025. Since returning from the injured list on May 20, he’s posted a 6.56 ERA across 13 starts. Every once in a while, there’s a glimmer of hope for the 31-year-old, who had a three-start stretch against Washington, Tampa Bay and Philadelphia in which his ERA was 3.00 with two quality starts. However, those stretches are often preceded and succeeded by several outings of rocky command, loud contact and, most importantly, no length. Part of the appeal of Buehler last winter was the presumption that once he got to October, the switch would flip and he’d provide quality outings for a Red Sox team hungry to make a World Series run. While Buehler set the precedent last year that he’s more than capable of elevating after a down year, it’s no mystery that he’s fallen off from what was a rocky 2024 for the Los Angeles Dodgers. His strikeouts are down, quality of contact is worse, command is worse, velocity is worse; the list goes on. Given that the Red Sox are in a position to contend this year, and Buehler is receiving $500,000 every other start from here on in, those struggles are exaggerated. It starts—or, perhaps, ends—Friday against the Padres. This is his 20th start of the season, giving him his first bonus of $500,000. Ironically, this setting is exactly where the turnaround took place for Buehler last October. After getting torched for six runs in the second inning of his NLDS start, he followed up with three scoreless to finish that outing before firing four scoreless against the New York Mets and then six innings against the New York Yankees in the World Series. Buehler doesn't need a metaphorical wake-up call—he knows how much he’s struggled this year. However, perhaps the reminder that this is where the turnaround happened less than a year ago, combined with the fact these two teams are both hungry to win their respective divisions, gives him a shot of adrenaline he can channel into a successful outing. After all, he did dazzle in his last road start against the Phillies, where he showcased a new windup before dazzling for seven innings of one(earned)-run ball. It won't be easy to replicate that. The Padres don't whiff at all -- second-lowest whiff rate in baseball -- and Buehler already struggles to get them in general. They're also eighth in the league in expected batting average against fastballs 95 miles per hour and slower, which accounts for 584 of Buehler's 607 fastballs since coming off the IL in May. At this stage of the game, getting quality out of everybody is massive. That said, getting quality out of a guy like Buehler is everything to this pitching staff, and a turnaround for him would mean arguably more to the rotation than shortstop Trevor Story’s did for the lineup. View full article