The Red Sox is in offseason mode after they were eliminated by the Yankees last week. Chief Baseball Officer Craig Breslow had a meeting with reporters on Monday to discuss the coming winter (left via Tim Healey from The Boston Globe And Jen McCaffrey from The Athletic). Like many leaders of baseball operations, Breslow mainly spoke in general, but gave a few hints about the plans of the front office.
Starting pitching should be a focus for a second season in a row outside the season. The SOX carried out the most impactful rotation movement last winter, trading four prospects Garrett hook And just after the opening day for an extension of six years. Crochet was everything that the team could have hoped for and should achieve a top two finish in the Cy Young mood.
“Every team will get better if you can bring in a starter or develop a starting pitch that can throw at the Garrett Crochet level,” said Breslow. “We will be as aggressive as possible if we try to pursue it, while we also ensure that we do everything we can to develop our players internally.” Crochet can compete against any other pitcher in the MLB during game 1 of a play-off series, but the SOX probably miss a real #2-starter.
Brayan Bello And Lucas Giolito were their second and third best starters of the past season. Bello achieved a best ERA of 3.35 in his career about 166 2/3 innings. He uses a heavy ground ball approach and noted personal lows in both the strike outdated percentage (17.7%) and the swinging strike percentage (8.6%). Bello conquered that by posting an ERA of less than 3.00 every month between June and August. The lack of smells seemed to catch up at the end of the season, because he allowed an ERA of 5.40 with a strikeout-to-Walk ratio of 16:12 during his five starts in September. Bello received two runs on four hits without escaping the third inning in his only Playoff start.
Giolito did not take the play-offs into account at all and may not return in 2026. During the last days of the regular season, the experienced right-wing player went down with an elbow injury that ended the season. That came shortly after he reached the unconditional threshold of 140 innings to convert a club option of $ 14 million into a mutual provision of $ 19 million.
Giolito tended to a contract for three or four years if he had closed the season healthily. The elbow problem clouds his future, but he recently told Chris Cotillo van Masslive There is structurally nothing wrong with his UCL. He will probably reject his end to the mutual option and look for a multi -year deal, and if the elbow injury was more serious than initially expected, the SOX would have chosen their side of the option anyway.
A few of the remaining internal options are injured or come back from important problems. Patrick Sandoval Should be in the mix after having spent this season with the rehabilitation of the UCL operation last summer. Snijder Crawford Missed all year because of knee and wrist injuries and underwent a seasonal operation for the latter in June.
Tanner Houck underwent a Tommy John operation in August; The SOX could not offer him instead of an expected arbitration salary of $ 3.95 million. Hunter Dobbins His cruciate ligament tore around the All-Star Break. It is unlikely that he will be ready for the opening day. Dustin May Will be a free agent and do not pitch well after being taken over as part of a bizarre quiet trade deadline. Richard Fitts Had an Even Era of 5.00 past 11 performances.
Internally, that would put a lot of pressure on the younger arms of the SOX. Connelly early And Payton Tolle Each had a breaking minor League seasons and was forced to MLB action at the end of the season. Early was very impressive during his first pair of starts; Tolle had a rocky first impression. Both have plus points from the left and can compete for rotation places in Spring Training, but together they have eight MLB-Starts (including the late season). Kyle Harrison Will also be in the mix, but the SOX kept him in Triple-A until they actually had no other healthy starting pitchers anymore.
Framber ValdezNPB equal Tatsuya Imai And Dylan stops are among the best free agent starters that are available. Trade candidates include Mackenzie Gore,, ” Joe Ryan,, ” Pablo Lopez And Sandy alcantara. The Red Sox were more often linked to Ryan during the Trade Deadline than any other team. It would be a surprise if they did not collaborate with the Twins (although Minnesota would of course hear from many teams about the talented right -handed).
Breslow also kept a few goals on the side of the position player: adding strength and improving the defense. The SOX was in 15th place in the MLB with 186 homeruns. Breslow noted that the Longball can get a greater interest in the ‘postseason’, where it will be a greater challenge to string hits together against pitching at a higher level. Of course he did not say that the SOX would be sold out for Powerbats, but called the more difficult score environment in October a “consideration” when compiling the selection.
Free Agency has a few sluggers. Kyle Schwarber,, ” Piet Alonso And Eugenio Suarez all come on the market and have a potential of at least 40 Homer (quite a bit more in the case of Schwarber). Japanese corner Munetaka Murakami will be available through the postal system. He is sensitive to strikeouts and not a great defender, but he has a season of 56 homeruns in the NPB to his name. He hit 22 homeruns and hit .273/.379/.663 in 56 games, despite an oblique injury this year.
None of these players would offer any form of defensive value. Boston led the Majors with 116 errors. An outer field with Years Duran,, ” Ceddanne Rafaela,, ” Roman Antonius And WILIER ABEU must be defensively strong. The infield was not nearly that good.
Trevor Story’s The range has decreased sharply at the short stop. It does not seem impossible that the SOX could move to second base out of respect Marcelo Mayer At one point (assuming that Story does not unsubscribe for the remaining two years and $ 55 million to his deal). Kristian Campbell Struggled as a rookie on both sides of the ball and has no clear seasonal opening role, despite the fact that he signed an eight -year extension last spring.
Suárez and Murakami could play on third base, but that would have been a defensive relegation compared to Alex Bregman – who will almost certainly unsubscribe in search of a contract for six or seven years. Schwarber and Alonso have even less positional flexibility. The SOX already has an abundance of outfielders, which will lead to more trade rumors about Duran and Abreu. Masataka Yoshida is a Bat-only player in the left field or at DH. First base Triston Casas Comes from a serious knee injury. Breslow avoided a question about the roles of these players, especially Casas. “I don’t think it is very logical on October 6 to say that someone is or not our first Honkman. We will see how things turn out,” he said (through Healey).
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