Red Sox Have Had Talks With Eugenio Suárez

As the Red Sox look to add power to their lineup, they’ve talked internally about the possibility of signing Eugenio Suárez and held some talks with his camp, Alex Speier of the Boston Globe reports. The team’s interest in Suárez is all the more notable with the market’s top slugger, Kyle Schwarber, off the board on a five-year that’ll keep in Philadelphia. The Red Sox were known to have interest in Schwarber.

Speier frames Suarez as something of a fallback at third base, should Alex Bregman sign elsewhere, or a possible piece of the first base (and, presumably, designated hitter) puzzle. Playing Suárez full-time or even semi-regularly at first base might be a stretch, though the D-backs and Mariners both gave him short looks there in 2025. That was a total of only six innings — the first of his career — but some have speculated that Suárez could slide across the diamond as he moves into his mid-30s. Regular work at DH would only be feasible if the Sox were to find a taker for Masataka Yoshida.

Suárez, 34, ranked fifth among all big leaguers with 49 home runs this past season, trailing only Shohei Ohtani, Schwarber, Cal Raleigh and Aaron Judge. He hit .228/.298/.526 on the season as a whole, though that production was weighed down a bit by some struggles in the immediate aftermath of a trade from Arizona back to Seattle. Suárez stumbled out of the gate in his return to the Emerald City, slashing an anemic .141/.188/.266 in his first 69 plate appearances. To some extent, he turned things around thereafter, popping 11 homers over his final 151 plate appearances, but he did so with a huge strikeout rate and sub-.300 OBP.

That sort of stretch is par for the course with Suárez, a prodigious slugger who’s prone to strikeouts. In past seasons, his walk rate has helped to compensate for some of that swing-and-miss penchant. That’s not quite been the case in 2024-25, as Suárez’s walk rate has dipped to a slightly below-average 7.3%.

Suárez still makes tons of loud contact (90.2 mph average exit velocity, 47.6% hard-hit rate), but he chased off the plate at a career-high 31% clip last season — a significant problem for a hitter whose 39% contact rate on pitches off the plate was among the lowest in baseball. That poor contact rate when chasing isn’t a backbreaker in and of itself, but it is when coupled with such a prominent propensity to chase. Judge, for instance, had the worst contact rate among all qualified hitters on balls off the plate, per Statcast. However, he chased just 22.3% of such offerings.

Concerns about his OBP and strikeouts notwithstanding, Suárez clearly has some of the most power in the game. And, at 34 years of age (35 next July), he’s not going to exceed three years on his next contract and could plausibly command only two with a premium annual value. Suárez is also revered as a teammate, which played a role in the Mariners’ desire to reacquire him after originally trading him when ownership mandated payroll cuts following the 2023 season.

It doesn’t sound as though Suárez is Boston’s top option, but the Red Sox join the Cubs and incumbent Mariners as known teams intrigued by the righty-swinging slugger’s thunderous power so far this offseason.