The Red Sox are in offseason mode after being bounced by the Yankees last week. Chief baseball officer Craig Breslow met with reporters on Monday to discuss the upcoming winter (links via Tim Healey of The Boston Globe and Jen McCaffrey of The Athletic). Like many baseball operations leaders, Breslow spoke mostly in generalities but provided a few hints to the front office’s plans.
Starting pitching should be a focus for a second straight offseason. The Sox pulled off the most impactful rotation move of last winter, trading four prospects for Garrett Crochet and signing him to a six-year extension just after Opening Day. Crochet was everything the team could have hoped for and should land a top two finish in Cy Young balloting.
“Every team gets better if you can bring in a starter or develop a starting pitcher who can pitch at Garrett Crochet’s level,” Breslow said. “We will be as aggressive as we can when trying to chase that down while also ensuring we are doing everything we can to develop our players internally.” Crochet can go toe to toe with any other pitcher in MLB during Game 1 of a playoff series, but the Sox are arguably lacking a true #2 starter.
Brayan Bello and Lucas Giolito were their second and third best starters this past season. Bello turned in a career-best 3.35 ERA across 166 2/3 innings. He has a ground-ball heavy approach and posted personal lows in both strikeout rate (17.7%) and swinging strike percentage (8.6%). Bello overcame that to post a sub-3.00 ERA each month between June and August. The lack of whiffs seemed to catch up to him at the end of the season, as he allowed a 5.40 ERA with a 16:12 strikeout-to-walk ratio over his five starts in September. Bello surrendered two runs on four hits without escaping the third inning in his lone playoff start.
Giolito didn’t factor into the playoffs at all and might not be back in 2026. The veteran righty went down with a season-ending elbow injury during the waning days of the regular season. That came shortly after he’d reached the 140-inning vesting threshold to convert what had been a $14MM club option into a $19MM mutual provision.
Giolito was trending towards a three- or four-year deal had he finished the season healthy. The elbow issue clouds his future, but he recently told Chris Cotillo of MassLive there’s nothing structurally amiss with his UCL. He’ll probably decline his end of the mutual option and look for a multi-year deal, and if the elbow injury were more serious than initially expected, the Sox would have passed on their side of the option either way.
A few of remaining in-house options are injured or coming back from significant issues. Patrick Sandoval should be in the mix after spending this season rehabbing last summer’s UCL surgery. Kutter Crawford missed the whole year due to knee and wrist injuries, undergoing season-ending surgery for the latter in June.
Tanner Houck underwent Tommy John surgery in August; the Sox could non-tender him in lieu of a projected $3.95MM arbitration salary. Hunter Dobbins tore his ACL around the All-Star Break. He’s unlikely to be ready for Opening Day. Dustin May will be a free agent and didn’t pitch well after being acquired as part of a bizarrely quiet trade deadline. Richard Fitts had an even 5.00 ERA over 11 appearances.
Internally, that’d place a lot of pressure on the Sox’s younger arms. Connelly Early and Payton Tolle each had breakout minor league seasons and were pressed into late-season MLB action. Early was very impressive over his first few starts; Tolle had a rockier first impression. Both have plus stuff from the left side and can compete for rotation spots in Spring Training, but they have a combined eight MLB starts (postseason included) between them. Kyle Harrison will be in the mix as well, yet the Sox kept him in Triple-A until they’d essentially run out of other healthy starting pitchers.
Framber Valdez, NPB righty Tatsuya Imai and Dylan Cease are among the top free agent starters available. Trade candidates include MacKenzie Gore, Joe Ryan, Pablo López and Sandy Alcantara. The Red Sox were linked to Ryan more frequently than any other team at the trade deadline. It’d be a surprise if they didn’t reengage with the Twins (though Minnesota will of course hear from plenty of teams about the talented right-hander).
Breslow also alluded to a couple goals on the position player side: adding power and improving the defense. The Sox ranked 15th in MLB with 186 home runs. Breslow noted that the longball can take on greater importance in the postseason, where it becomes more challenging to string together hits against higher-level pitching. He didn’t say the Sox were going to sell out for power bats, of course, but called the tougher October scoring environment a “consideration” when building the roster.
Free agency features a few sluggers. Kyle Schwarber, Pete Alonso and Eugenio Suárez are all hitting the market and have at least 40-homer potential (quite a bit more in Schwarber’s case). Japanese corner infielder Munetaka Murakami will be available via the posting system. He’s strikeout prone and not a great defender, but he has a 56-homer season in NPB under his belt. He drilled 22 homers and hit .273/.379/.663 over 56 games despite battling an oblique injury this year.
None of those players would provide any kind of defensive value. Boston led the majors with 116 errors. An outfield featuring Jarren Duran, Ceddanne Rafaela, Roman Anthony and Wilyer Abreu should be strong defensively. The infield wasn’t nearly as good.
Trevor Story’s range has declined sharply at shortstop. It doesn’t seem out of the question that the Sox could look to move him to second base in deference to Marcelo Mayer at some point (assuming Story doesn’t opt out of the remaining two years and $55MM on his deal). Kristian Campbell struggled on both sides of the ball as a rookie and doesn’t have a clear season-opening role despite signing an eight-year extension last spring.
Suárez and Murakami could play third base, but they’d be defensive downgrades compared to Alex Bregman — who’ll almost certainly opt out in search of a six or seven-year deal. Schwarber and Alonso have even less positional flexibility. The Sox already have their glut of outfielders that’ll lead to more trade rumors involving Duran and Abreu. Masataka Yoshida is a bat-only player in left field or at DH. First baseman Triston Casas is coming off a major knee injury. Breslow dodged a question about the roles for any of those players, especially Casas. “I don’t think it makes a ton of sense on October 6 to say someone is or isn’t our first baseman. We’ll see how things play out,” he said (via Healey).
Who on earth is going to give Bregman a six or seven year deal ?? He ain’t no spring chicken anymore. Detroit perhaps, if they were desperate??