Ryan Painter

Since the Alex Cora ejection and Trevor Story blowup in Cincinnati, the Boston Red Sox have failed to make the necessary adjustments to turn the ABS challenge system into an edge. The numbers aren’t terrible, but they don’t exactly inspire confidence in the team’s approach, either. Boston sits at a 45 percent overall success rate on challenges through more than three weeks, putting the club squarely in the lower half of the league. More telling is just how uneven that approach still feels. Cincinnati was only the beginning. What matters now is what the Red Sox have done since. Roman Anthony was blunt after the game: his third-inning challenge was poorly timed and put the team in a bind. Wilyer Abreu agreed. The message? Save them. Treat challenges like the finite, high-stakes resource that they are. Tools with the potential to tilt the odds when the game is actually on the line. Don’t burn one just because a pitch looks wrong in the moment. That messaging would have carried more weight if the games had looked cleaner since. They haven’t. The Red Sox have had some successful challenges alongside some continued misses. That’s to be expected. The bigger problem is that the overall pattern still feels unsettled, undecided even. If there’s a clear ABS plan in place in the clubhouse, it hasn’t shown up on the field. ABS does more than clean up a missed call. It changes how a team has to manage a game. It can change who trusts what, who speaks up and when a team decides a challenge is worth spending in that moment. Now that the system exists, everyone knows that a bad call may be fixable. But once those challenges are gone, the safety net they provide is gone as well, and the cost suddenly feels very real. Boston felt that sting in Cincinnati. The Red Sox burned challenges early and had nothing left for the bigger pitches later in the game. Story’s reaction and Cora’s ejection may have been what grabbed the headlines, but the real damage was the lost flexibility late in the game. The Red Sox didn’t just get frustrated; they ran out of chances when it counted most. By comparison, Cincinnati looked more comfortable with the system. The Reds weren’t just better at winning challenges; they seemed to understand the rhythm of the new rules. Meanwhile, Boston looked like a team challenging on feel, not one managing the system with much discipline. That part hasn’t been cleaned up. A system like ABS only becomes a real advantage when everyone shares the same idea of how to use it. Managers can’t call for challenges from the dugout. Coaches can’t wave one in. The decision belongs to the batter, pitcher, or catcher, and it has to happen immediately. So, any team strategy shows up in player habits: restraint, trust and some kind of internal hierarchy. Boston has not made that hierarchy obvious yet. Maybe there is a solid plan behind the scenes. Maybe the Red Sox are sharper internally than outside results suggest. From the outside, however, it still looks more reactive than deliberate. A challenge wasted in a low-leverage spot stings a lot more when a crucial pitch comes up later and the team has nothing left. The catcher piece stands out, too. If anyone should have an edge in this system, it's the guys with the best view of the zone. Boston hasn’t looked especially sharp there so far, with its catchers succeeding on just 43 percent of all challenges (28th in MLB). That doesn’t prove they’re doing it wrong, but it does make it fair to wonder whether they’re getting full value from the players best positioned to give them an accurate read. And that’s the real question. Not whether ABS is bad. Not whether one umpire can cost a team a game. Those takes are too easy. The useful question is whether the Red Sox have used the system deliberately enough to turn it into something more than an in-the-moment reaction. Cincinnati still matters for that very reason. Not just because Cora got tossed or Story lost his cool. It exposed a problem the Red Sox said they needed to learn from, and the games since haven’t shown the lesson has stuck. Over 162 games, this won’t decide everything. It doesn’t have to. Small edges are the point. One saved challenge in the seventh inning matters more than an emotional one in the third. One catcher-led overturn in a high-leverage spot matters more than proving a hitter was technically right two innings earlier. Teams that figure that out earlier are going to reap the benefits of the system. Teams that don’t are going to keep giving it away. The Red Sox don’t look like a team that has figured out its strategy with the new system. They still look like one working through it. Maybe that changes soon. Maybe a month from now Boston looks sharper, more selective and more comfortable with who should be driving these decisions. For right now, the clearest read is also the simplest one: what looked like one sloppy afternoon in Cincinnati is starting to feel more like an unresolved habit. View full article

Opening Day roster decisions are easy to forget once the games begin. Most of the attention shifts to the stars, the top of the lineup, and the front of the rotation. But the edge of a roster can reveal something more important — it can show how a team plans to survive the games that do not go cleanly. That is what stood out in the Boston Red Sox’s opening series in Cincinnati. Boston left town 1-2, so this is not about declaring the roster validated after one weekend. It is about something more useful than that. The first series started to show what the Red Sox believe they need to be. This looks like a team trying to win on flexibility as much as talent. It wants options. It wants coverage. It wants the ability to manage matchups and protect itself when games drift off script. That is what made the final roster decisions worth watching in the first place. Marcelo Mayer was the most prominent of those calls, and his first series captured the balance Boston seems to want. Alex Cora spent the spring making it clear Mayer had to earn a spot. He did. On Opening Day. he rewarded that trust immediately, coming off the bench to double and score. That was the upside of the bet. Boston trusted the talent and got an instant return. By the end of the series, the other side of the equation showed up. On Sunday, the Red Sox still managed the position situationally, turning to Andruw Monasterio for a pinch-hit spot and keeping him in defensively at second base. The move gave Boston a right-handed option in the moment with Monasterio and a clean defensive fit afterward. That is what makes Mayer important to this conversation. Boston was willing to reward performance but it was not willing to surrender flexibility to do it. The Red Sox did not treat second base like a symbolic prospect promotion. They treated it like a position they intended to manage to win. The same idea carried into the bench. Monasterio did not need a huge series to show why Boston wanted him. He only needed to show why the spot existed. His role was not to fill a bench seat. It was to give Cora another useful piece at the edge of the roster, one that could help him manage matchups and keep the infield covered without losing flexibility elsewhere. That is the kind of player who can look unimportant until the exact moment he is needed. The same was true on the pitching side, where Ryan Watson’s debut may have said as much about the Red Sox's priorities as any of the late-camp decisions. Watson making the team was easy to frame as a Rule 5 roster obligation. Saturday showed why that was too simple. After the starter exited early and the game stretched deep, Watson gave Boston 2 1/3 scoreless innings in his major-league debut. The three walks showed the usual nerves and rough edges, but the outing still made the point. The Red Sox wanted another arm who could absorb meaningful innings when a game stopped behaving the way it was supposed to. That is not a glamorous roster function, but it is a real one. Connelly Early fit that same logic. The back of the staff was never just about naming a fifth starter. As reported by MassLive’s Chris Cotillo, Boston’s end-of-camp pitching decisions were shaped in part by the need for extra length while Brayan Bello and Ranger Suárez continued building up after World Baseball Classic duty. That made the decision less about spring hierarchy and more about practical coverage. Early backed that up Sunday. He gave the Red Sox 5 1/3 innings and left Boston in position to win before the bullpen let the game turn later. While that does not settle anything long term, it does underline the short-term point. And that is why this series mattered, even in a losing set. The Red Sox’s late roster bets did not define the weekend but they helped explain the shape of the team. Mayer showed Boston is willing to trust talent without giving up control of the matchup game. Monasterio showed the bench was built for specific utility. Watson showed why innings coverage mattered. Early showed why practical depth at the back of the staff was worth prioritizing. None of these decisions are permanent. A week from now the picture could shift. A month from now some of these names may be gone. But the opening series already revealed something real: the Red Sox built the edges of this roster not for decoration, but for the messy, unpredictable stretches that decide games. If that flexible identity holds, those final roster spots will not just matter. They could become difference-makers. View full article