Red Sox Injury Notes: Crawford, Bello, Giolito, Rotation, Abreu
When the Red Sox opened camp last week, Kutter Crawford stood out as an immediate injury concern due to a lingering knee problem that first arose last April. The situation hasn’t much improved, as manager Alex Cora told MassLive.com’s Chris Cotillo (multiple links) and other reporters that Crawford’s right patellar tendon is still giving him discomfort following a long-toss session on Thursday and a bullpen session yesterday.
“Opening Day, right now, is an ‘if.’ Let’s see what happens,” Cora said. “[Crawford is] not feeling well. He’s behind. We’ve got to make sure the knee is good so the shoulder doesn’t suffer.”
Unfortunately for the Sox, Crawford isn’t the only pitcher facing uncertainty early in camp, as Brayan Bello has been dealing with shoulder soreness since the start of spring camp. Cora said Bello will undergo a strength test tomorrow, as the Red Sox continue to evaluate the right-hander’s status. To date, Bello has been throwing, but the team has been taking it relatively slowly with this progression, and Cora said Bello hasn’t thrown any bullpens. Between the two starters, Crawford seems to be more of a question mark than Bello, as Cora said that “with Kutter, that’s the one it looks like is going to be long.”
With over a month before Opening Day, there is plenty of time for either pitcher to still get healthy for the season in general, even if the Red Sox could be cautious in placing Crawford and/or Bello on the 15-day injured list just to provide more ramp-up time. In theory, Boston has a good deal of pitching depth on hand in the form of Cooper Criswell, Richard Fitts, Quinn Priester and Michael Fulmer, so any of these arms could fill in for Crawford, Bello, or Lucas Giolito, who is still working through his rehab from an internal brace surgery from last March.
Only five proper starters will be needed in the early going, as Cora confirmed that Boston will be using a five-man rotation. Reports in January indicated that the Sox were at least thinking about a six-man staff in order to best utilize and manage its starting depth, but Cora said “we haven’t talked about a six-man. You guys have talked about it. If we go that route, it’s for a reason. For right now, we’re taking the best five and using the bullpen.”
This lines the staff up as Garrett Crochet, Tanner Houck, Walker Buehler, Giolito if healthy enough for Opening Day, and then potentially one of the depth starters if Bello and Crawford indeed aren’t available. Plans could certainly change given Boston’s busy early schedule, as both Cotillo and Cora noted that the team plays on 19 of the regular season’s first 20 days.
The injury bug is also impacting Boston’s position players, as Wilyer Abreu has yet to start workouts due to a gastrointestinal virus. A team spokesperson told Cotillo and other reporters that Abreu received “some abnormal labs” on his illness, but the “labs have been getting better, and he’s feeling better, but they’re waiting for those to get back to a normal range before baseball activity.”
More testing is coming on Monday, Cora said, and Abreu will sit through the weekend. A timeline isn’t in place for how much time Abreu could still miss, or whether or not this absence could cost him any time on the injured list at the start of the season. Abreu is slated for another heavy role in Boston’s outfield this season, as the Gold Glover looks to build on a very successful rookie year.
Red Sox Select Chase Shugart, Mickey Gasper; Designate Jamie Westbrook For Assignment
The Red Sox announced a series of roster moves today. Righty Brayan Bello has been reinstated from the paternity list and left-hander Bailey Horn has been recalled, while the club selected the contracts of right-hander Chase Shugart and catcher/infielder Mickey Gasper. It was reported last night that left-hander James Paxton suffered a right calf strain and he now lands on the 15-day injured list. Lefty Brennan Bernardino has been optioned to Triple-A Worcester, as has righty Brad Keller. A fourth active roster spot was opened with the Jarren Duran suspension, reported earlier today. To open a 40-man roster spot, infielder/outfielder Jamie Westbrook has been designated for assignment. Chris Cotillo of MassLive reported Shugart’s promotion on X prior to the official announcement.
Shugart, 27, gets the call to the big leagues for the first time. A 12th-round pick of the Sox in 2018, he has been working his way up the minor league ladder since then. He worked exclusively as a starter through 2021 but has primarily been working out of the bullpen since then.
His initial forays into Triple-A ball didn’t go well, as he posted a 6.82 earned run average at that level in 2022 and then an 8.22 ERA there last year. He’s had more success here in 2024, with a 4.98 ERA in 59 2/3 innings. That’s largely come in a multi-inning capacity, as he’s logged those frames over 28 appearances, including five starts. His 10.9% walk rate is a bit on the high side but he has punched out 26.6% of opponents this year and gotten grounders on 46.8% of balls in play.
Baseball America had Shugart on the back end of their organizational top 30 list back in 2019 and 2020 but not in recent years. The Sox are likely going to be leaning on him for a long man role in the coming days. Paxton suffered his injury after recording just two outs, forcing the bullpen to do yeoman’s work. Bernardino tossed an inning a third while each of Lucas Sims, Luis García and Cam Booser tossed two innings. First baseman Dominic Smith pitched a scoreless ninth with the Sox down 10-2 to the Astros. The Sox also did a bullpen game the day before, with Josh Winckowski covering three innings, Brad Keller eating up four, while Zack Kelly and Chris Martin picked up one each.
All told, the pitching staff is fairly taxed and the Sox don’t have another off-day until August 22, over a week from now. Righty Cooper Criswell went on the COVID IL recently and has an unknown timeline. With Paxton now out as well, the rotation is down to Bello, Kutter Crawford, Tanner Houck and Nick Pivetta. Perhaps Winckowski will get another shot after throwing three innings on the weekend, or perhaps Criswell can make a quick return. The club also has Quinn Priester on optional assignment and could recall him at some point. But in the meantime, Shugart can sop up some innings, if needed.
Gasper, 28, was also selected in the 2018 draft, but by the Yankees. He came to the Red Sox via the minor league phase of the 2023 Rule 5 draft. He has generally put up positive numbers in a hit-over-power fashion, though he’s always been old for whatever level he’s been playing at. He didn’t reach Triple-A until last year, his age-27 season, and hit .191/.295/.265 in his first 22 games at that level.
This year has gone much better. He’s played 44 Double-A games and 40 at Triple-A. Between those two clubs, he has a 15.9% walk rate, 11% strikeout rate and .341/.458/.559 batting line that translates to a wRC+ of 175.
Despite the massive batting line, Gasper’s not really considered a top prospect, though it would make for a great story if he could engineer a late-bloomer breakout. He has played catcher, first base and second base this year, in addition to a bit of third base time in previous seasons. He figures to slot into the club’s bench mix, giving them depth at various spots.
Westbrook, 29, signed a minor league deal with Boston in the offseason. They selected his contract in June, his first time cracking a major league roster. He has received 48 big league plate appearances so far, hitting just .150/.234/.350 in that small sample. He has always hit well in the minors and that’s still true this year. He has a line of .291/.381/.475 in 71 Triple-A games, drawing walks at a strong 12% clip and limiting his strikeouts to a 17.2% clip.
Defensively, he has played the three non-shortstop infield positions as well as right field this year. Since the trade deadline has passed, the Sox will have no choice but to put him on waivers in the coming days. If any team puts in a claim, Westbrook still has a full slate of options and just a few days of service time.
Red Sox Activate Brayan Bello From Injured List
The Red Sox announced this morning that the club has activated right-hander Brayan Bello from the 15-day injured list. Right-hander Josh Winckowski was optioned to Triple-A in the corresponding move. Bello is slated to start this afternoon’s game against the Nationals at Fenway Park.
Bello, who will celebrate his 25th birthday later this week, has been on the shelf since late April due to a bout of lat tightness. Prior to the injury, the young righty had pitched solidly through five starts with the Red Sox this year with a 3.04 ERA and 4.06 FIP in 26 2/3 innings of work. He’s struck out a respectable 23.6% of batters faced and generated groundballs at a 51.3% clip during that time, although a whopping 19% of his fly balls leaving the yard for home runs stands out as a potential red flag in an otherwise impressive early-season performance.
That success on the mound has been par for the course among Red Sox starters this year, as the club’s 2.42 rotation ERA is the best figure in the majors to this point in the season thanks to excellent starts from the likes of Kutter Crawford and Tanner Houck. With righty Nick Pivetta having also been activated from the injured list in recent days, the club’s rotation is once again approaching full strength. While righty Garrett Whitlock remains on the shelf due to an oblique strain, righty Cooper Criswell has performed admirably in his absence with a 2.10 ERA and 3.94 FIP in 25 2/3 innings of work.
Making room for Bello on the active roster is Winckowski, who will turn 26 next month. It’s a somewhat surprising move given his success over the past two seasons. The righty was among the best multi-inning relief arms in all of baseball last year as he posted a 2.88 ERA with a 3.91 FIP in 84 1/3 innings of work across 60 appearances. He hasn’t quite kept that performance up this year, although he’s still enjoyed solid results with a 3.33 ERA and 4.27 FIP in 24 1/3 innings of work.
While that sort of performance would seem to warrant a spot in the club’s bullpen over other optionable arms such as Cam Booser, it’s worth noting that Winckowski’s peripherals have taken a significant turn for the worse this year. The right-hander has struggled to miss bats this year as his strikeout rate has fallen from a respectable 22.3% last year all the way to just 16.8% this season. Meanwhile, his walk rate has ticked up from 8.4% to 9.7% and his groundball rate has dropped more than five points after sitting at a strong 51.2% last season. Those shaky peripheral numbers suggest that regression may have been on the horizon for Winckowski had he remained in the majors, a possibility supported by is elevated 4.53 xFIP and 5.43 xERA.
Going forward, Winckowski will head to the Triple-A level and look to recapture what made him such an effective reliever for the club last season while acting as an optionable depth arm for the club to lean on alongside former NPB starter Naoyuki Uwasawa. Meanwhile, the Red Sox appear poised to lean on right-hander Justin Slaten to fill the sort of high leverage, multi-inning role they turned to Winckowski for last year. Slaten has impressed in 13 contests this year with a 1.74 ERA and 2.34 FIP in 20 2/3 innings of work.
Red Sox Notes: Grissom, Pivetta, Bello, Yoshida
Vaughn Grissom will make his Red Sox debut tonight against the Twins. Boston reinstated the young infielder from the 10-day injured list, optioning Bobby Dalbec to Triple-A Worcester in a corresponding move. Grissom gets the nod at the keystone and is hitting seventh against Chris Paddack.
Acquired from the Braves for Chris Sale, Grissom entered camp as Boston’s expected second baseman. Groin and hamstring issues (plus a recent bout with the flu) kept him off the field for the first five weeks. That paired with a season-ending injury to Trevor Story to leave the Sox very shorthanded in the middle infield. They moved Ceddanne Rafaela in to handle shortstop.
It’s been more of a revolving door at second base, where no one has produced. Boston second basemen are hitting an MLB-worst .179/.202/.299 over 125 plate appearances. Enmanuel Valdez and Pablo Reyes took the majority of those reps. Valdez was recently optioned, while Reyes has been designated for assignment.
Grissom, 23, brings quite a bit more offensive upside. He’s coming off a .330/.419/.501 line in Triple-A in the Atlanta system. The Braves’ loaded infield limited him to 64 big league contests over the past two seasons, but he turned in a solid .287/.339/.407 showing. Grissom collected 10 hits (eight singles and two doubles) over nine games on his minor league rehab stint.
Manager Alex Cora provided positive updates on a handful of injured pitchers this evening (link via MassLive’s Christopher Smith). Nick Pivetta is expected to return to the rotation during next week’s series in Atlanta. The righty tossed three innings in a rehab start with Worcester yesterday. While the results weren’t good — he allowed four runs on three hits and four walks — the Sox don’t feel he needs another minor league appearance. Pivetta dominated through two starts before a mild flexor strain sent him to the IL on April 9.
Brayan Bello and Garrett Whitlock are a bit further behind, but both are set to take steps in their respective recoveries. Bello, who went on the shelf on April 21 with lat tightness, will make one rehab start at Double-A Portland and could return to Boston by the end of next week. Whitlock is set to throw a bullpen session tomorrow, his first mound work since an oblique strain knocked him out on April 17.
Despite the injuries, the Red Sox’s rotation has been fantastic. Boston starters enter play Friday with an MLB-best 2.03 ERA. They’re ninth in strikeout rate and sixth in strikeout/walk rate differential. Kutter Crawford and Tanner Houck have each logged around 40 innings of sub-2.00 ERA ball. Bello, Whitlock and Pivetta were each performing well before going on the IL. Depth arms Cooper Criswell and Josh Winckowski have stepped in effectively in their respective trio of starts.
The news wasn’t universally positive for Boston, however. Designated hitter Masataka Yoshida is heading for a second opinion after his recent IL placement, tweets the Boston Globe’s Pete Abraham. The Sox initially announced his injury as a left thumb sprain. It’s not entirely clear what the initial evaluation suggested, but news of a second opinion is at least somewhat alarming.
Yoshida started the season slowly but had begun to find his form before the injury. He’s hitting .275/.348/.388 over 89 plate appearances for the year. Injuries to Yoshida and Triston Casas led the Sox to go outside the organization for Garrett Cooper and Dominic Smith to split playing time between first base and DH.
Red Sox Place Brayan Bello On Injured List Due To Lat Tightness
The Red Sox announced that right-hander Brayan Bello has been placed on the 15-day injured list, retroactive to April 21, with right lat tightness. Right-hander Zack Kelly has been recalled in a corresponding move.
The news is unfortunate for both Bello and the Sox. He cemented himself in the club’s rotation plans last year by tossing 157 innings over 28 starts with a 4.24 earned run average. His 19.8% strikeout rate was subpar but he only walked 6.7% of batters and kept 56.2% of balls in play on the ground.
The Sox clearly have faith in Bello’s future and put their money on it by signing him to a $55MM extension back in March. Since Bello had generally had stronger strikeout numbers in the minors, the club likely hoped that there was still room for him to grow as a pitcher. He showed a bit of progress here in the early going of 2024, striking out 23.6% of batters faced through his first five starts.
Unfortunately, that progress will now be put on hold, as Bello is the latest in a line of Boston players to get hurt. Lucas Giolito required season-ending surgery back in the offseason and pitchers like Nick Pivetta, Garrett Whitlock, Bryan Mata and Chris Murphy have also landed on the injured list.
Now that Bello is joining that group, the Boston rotation is down to Tanner Houck, Kutter Crawford, Cooper Criswell and Josh Winckowski and they will have to figure out who is going to step up. Veteran Chase Anderson is with the club and has been throwing multi-inning stints out of the bullpen, so he would be one option. Naoyuki Uwasawa is on the 40-man roster and currently on optional assignment. The Sox recently acquired Vladimir Gutierrez, though he just made a one-inning bullpen appearance at Triple-A on Sunday, so perhaps they view him more as a reliever.
The club’s starters have a collective 1.80 ERA so far this year, which leads the majors. That’s a big reason why they’ve managed to keep pace in the highly competitive American League East. But the mounting injuries will obviously make it challenging to maintain that kind of performance going forward. The club hasn’t yet provided any estimates for how long they expect Bello to be out of action but more information should be forthcoming either today or in the days to come.
MLBTR Podcast: Injured Pitchers, Brayan Bello’s Extension, Mookie At Shortstop And J.D. Davis
The latest episode of the MLB Trade Rumors Podcast is now live on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts! Make sure you subscribe as well! You can also use the player at this link to listen, if you don’t use Spotify or Apple for podcasts.
This week, host Darragh McDonald is joined by Anthony Franco of MLB Trade Rumors to discuss…
- Injuries to pitchers such as Gerrit Cole of the Yankees and Lucas Giolito of the Red Sox and the potential ripple effects (1:45)
- Red Sox sign Brayan Bello to an extension (7:10)
- Dodgers moving Mookie Betts to shortstop (10:40)
- Giants release J.D. Davis (16:10)
- Noelvi Marté of the Reds suspended for PEDs (22:50)
Plus, we answer your questions, including…
- Who had the worst offseason and why is it the Angels? (25:15)
- Fact or Fiction? The Red Sox are going to trade Masataka Yoshida. (28:50)
- Considering the amount of effort the Tigers front office has put into fielding a major league team in the past 10 years, should Tiger fans feel slighted? “They can wait” seems to be the attitude. Should Tiger fans just stop buying Little Caesars pizza and encourage their friends to buy their pizzas elsewhere? I am sure franchise owners enjoy being associated with a cheap loser. (31:20)
Check out our past episodes!
- The Giants Sign Matt Chapman, Zack Wheeler’s Extension, And Blake Snell And Jordan Montgomery Remain – listen here
- How Cody Bellinger’s Deal Affects The Other Free Agents And Why The Offseason Played Out Like This – listen here
- Finding Fits For The “Boras Four,” Which Teams Could Still Spend? And Rob Manfred In His Last Term – listen here
The podcast intro and outro song “So Long” is provided courtesy of the band Showoff. Check out their Facebook page here!
Red Sox Sign Brayan Bello To Extension
The Red Sox announced they have signed right-hander Brayan Bello to a six-year extension with a club option for 2030. It will give the team an extra two years of control over the 24-year-old and reportedly has a $55MM guarantee. Bello had previously been controllable through the 2028 season, but the Sox have locked in one would-be free agent year and also secured a club option for a second season that’s said to be valued at $21MM. Bello is represented by ISE Baseball.
Chris Cotillo of MassLive was among those to relay the full breakdown. Bello will get a $1MM signing bonus and salary of $1MM here in 2024, followed by successive salaries of $2.5MM, $6MM, $8.5MM, $16MM and $19MM. There’s also a $1MM buyout on the $21MM club option. There are also bonuses and escalators based on Cy Young voting and All-Star selections.
Bello, 25 in May, was signed out of the Dominican Republic for a modest bonus of $28K. But he continued to find success as he moved up the minor league ladder, climbing prospect lists in the process. Baseball America had him in the 15-20 range of their list of the top 30 Red Sox prospects in 2020 and 2021, then vaulted him up to #5 going into 2022. That was based on a 2021 season wherein Bello tossed 95 1/3 innings on the farm with a 3.87 earned run average, 32.8% strikeout rate and 7.7% walk rate while also keeping about half of balls in play on the ground.
He was added to the club’s 40-man roster late in 2021 to keep him out of that year’s Rule 5 draft. In 2022, he posted a 2.76 ERA at the Triple-A level and also got to make a brief major league debut, tossing 57 1/3 innings. His 4.71 ERA in that time wasn’t especially strong but his 55.7% ground ball rate and .404 BABIP suggested at least some of that was misfortune.
Last year got out to a shaky start, as he began the year on the injured list due to some elbow inflammation. He returned in mid-April and had a couple of shaky starts before the Sox decided to option him to the minors. An injury to Garrett Whitlock led to a quick return for Bello and it was at that point that he put together a strong stretch of work that established him as a viable big league hurler.
From his April 28 recall through the end of August, he made 21 starts for the Sox with a 3.20 ERA. His 19% strikeout rate was below average but his 6.4% walk rate and 55% ground ball rate were very strong. He seemed to run out of gas at that point, as he allowed 22 earned run in 26 September innings. Between the poor finish and the rough start, Bello ended up with a 4.24 ERA on the year overall, but the middle section of the season clearly opened some eyes.
It’s obviously a bit favorable to Bello to exclude his worst results, but he was a bit banged up at the beginning of the year and the thud at the end could be chalked up to last year being his largest innings tally thus far. The Sox clearly believe he’s capable of taking a step forward if they are willing to invest in him. He’s already shown he can keep the ball on the ground and the strikeouts might come around eventually, as his 11% swinging strike rate in his career so far is right around league average and he’s punched out 28.9% of hitters faced in the minors.
The Sox have very little starting pitching certainty going forward. Lucas Giolito was signed to a two-year deal this offseason but he now seems to be facing a significant absence due to a partially-torn UCL and a flexor tendon strain. Nick Pivetta is slated for free agency after 2024. That leaves their long-term rotation mix consisting of Bello, Kutter Crawford, Tanner Houck and Garrett Whitlock. Those are talented arms, but each of Crawford, Whitlock and Houck are still somewhat unestablished, with none of them having tossed 130 innings in a major league season yet. On BA’s current list of the top 30 prospects in the system, only two of the top 10 are pitchers, with Wikelman Gonzalez at #7 and Luis Perales at #9. The latter has yet to reach Double-A and the former has less than 50 innings pitched at that level.
Given those options, it’s understandable why the Sox wanted to build around Bello. And from the player’s perspective, his small bonus means he has yet to bank meaningful earnings, unlike a top draft pick or hyped-up international player who may already have millions stashed away. Bello’s service time clock is currently at one year and 82 days, meaning he wouldn’t have even reached arbitration until after the 2025 season.
A deal has seemed like a strong possibility for some time now. Back in January of last year, the young righty expressed his openness to such an arrangement and reporting from July suggested the club would likely broach the subject at some point. A few weeks ago, further reporting indicated that the two sides were discussing a new deal and it seems they are now making some headway.
As shown in MLBTR’s Contract Tracker, Bello is just the fifth pitcher with between one and two years of MLB service time to sign an extension in the past eight years. The two most recent examples — Cincinnati’s Hunter Greene and Atlanta’s Spencer Strider — signed six-year deals worth $53MM and $75MM, respectively. Strider’s contract is a record for this service class and was never likely to be matched by Bello. But the Boston right-hander will settle in just north of Greene’s deal, which was surely a point of focus for Bello and his camp.
Extensions usually feature climbing salaries as the years progress, roughly mirroring the arbitration process. The Sox currently have little on the books that would coincide with the most expensive years of this potential extension. Rafael Devers is under contract through 2033, but no one else is guaranteed a contract beyond 2027. Trevor Story and Masataka Yoshida are the only players guaranteed a salary beyond 2026. Adding Bello to that mix will put another salary of note on the payroll and modestly add to the team’s luxury ledger, but the extension is nonetheless an affordable means of locking in some stability while giving the team some upside in the event that Bello takes his game to a new level.
Alex Speier of the Boston Globe first reported that the two sides were in “advanced” talks on a deal. ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel broke the news that the two parties had agreed on a six-year, $55MM deal.
Red Sox, Brayan Bello Discussing Extension
The Red Sox and right-hander Brayan Bello are actively engaged in contract discussions, Bello himself tells Chris Cotillo of MassLive.com. While the 24-year-old righty didn’t put a specific timetable on when an agreement might come together, he suggested it’s possible that a deal could come together this spring.
Bello has long been viewed as a potential core piece for the Sox. Prior to making his big league debut in 2022, he was widely regarded as one of the Sox’ five to ten best prospects. He’d posted strong numbers in the upper minors and drawn praise from scouts for both a plus changeup and potentially plus heater, leading to projections as a future mid-rotation arm if all went according to plan.
Through the first season-plus of his career, Bello has pitched 214 1/3 innings of 4.37 ERA ball. His 20% strikeout rate is below the league average, but his 7.7% walk rate is better than average and his 56.1% ground-ball rate is among the best in the game for starting pitchers. That grounder rate and his command have led fielding-independent metrics to be a bit more bullish on the righty than his earned run average (4.11 FIP, 4.14 SIERA).
Bello’s four-seamer and more heavily used sinker have both been hit hard by MLB opponents, but that highly touted changeup has indeed stood out as a clear plus pitch for him; opponents have batted just .186 and slugged only .256 off the pitch in his career thus far. That’s been his only pitch with consistently strong results to date, but Bello sits 95.2 mph on his sinker and 95.7 mph on his four-seamer, so the velocity is certainly there for him to find success with his primary offerings. His 11% swinging-strike rate and 32.1% opponents’ chase rate are both right in line with the league-average marks, so there’s room for his strikeout rate to creep up a bit even in the absence of significant gains with his fastballs.
To this point in his career, Bello has amassed 1.082 years of major league service time. That puts him on track to be eligible for arbitration in the 2025-26 offseason and keeps him under Red Sox control through at least the 2028 season. Contract extensions for starting pitchers in this service bracket have been surprisingly rare in recent years, as shown in MLBTR’s Contract Tracker. For a whole decade, Madison Bumgarner‘s five-year, $35MM extension with the Giants back in April of 2012 stood as the record for this service class.
Braves righty Spencer Strider utterly shattered that precedent when he put pen to paper on a six-year, $75MM extension after just having surpassed one year of service (1.003). That extension came on the heels of an overpowering rookie season in which Strider finished second (to his own teammate, Michael Harris II) in National League Rookie of the Year voting. He’d logged 131 2/3 innings with a 2.67 ERA while fanning a borderline comical 38.3% of his opponents.
Bello’s performance to date doesn’t measure up to that dominance from Strider, and he’d likely fall well shy of that highwater mark on an extension of his own. Cincinnati right-hander Hunter Greene‘s even more recent six-year, $53MM extension could be viewed as a more salient comp for Bello’s camp, though it’s not perfectly analogous in its own right. Greene’s rookie showing in 2022 featured 125 2/3 innings of 4.44 ERA ball, and when he signed his contract in April of 2023, he carried a career 4.42 ERA in 148 2/3 frames. His path to those results was quite different — overpowering triple-digit fastball, plus strikeout rate, average command and a pronounced fly-ball profile — but they roughly align with Bello’s run-prevention numbers. Greene, however, is generally regarded as having a higher ceiling.
Both Strider and Greene signed six-year deals with a club option for a seventh season. A six-year deal would carry Bello through the 2029 season, and a seventh-year club option would give the Sox control over Bello’s 2030 campaign. If the two sides were to deviate from that structure, age could be a factor; Greene’s deal began in his age-23 campaign and Strider’s in his age-24 season. The 2024 campaign will be Bello’s age-25 season. A six-year deal and club option would keep him under club control through his age-31 year and position him to become a free agent entering his age-32 season.
If Bello wants a faster path to free agency (e.g. five years and an option), that’d be understandable but would also surely mean taking a guarantee shy of Greene’s $53MM. Even on a six-year deal, he’d likely fall a bit shy of that mark. When comparing him to Greene, it also bears mentioning that Greene had a larger safety net as a former No. 2 overall pick who’d received a $7.25MM bonus in the draft. Bello signed as a teenager out of the Dominican Republic for a $28K bonus and doesn’t have that type of financial security already established.
Whatever shape talks take, the mere fact that Boston is actively engaged in contract talks with a core young player represents a change of pace. The team waited until Rafael Devers was a year from free agency before shelling out a massive 10-year, $313.5MM extension (on top of his existing $17.5MM salary for his final arb year). Extensions for Xander Bogaerts (six years, $120MM) and Chris Sale (five years, $145MM) both similarly came when they were established stars with more than five years of MLB service. Again looking to our Contract Tracker, the only other pre-arb extension the Sox have given out in the past decade was Garrett Whitlock‘s four-year, $18.75MM deal. Prior to that, you’d have to go way back to Clay Buchholz in 2011 to find an extension for a player who’d yet to reach arbitration.
Red Sox CEO Sam Kennedy spoke earlier in camp about a need to begin exploring this type of contract earlier in his players’ careers (link via MassLive’s Sean McAdam). “Starting earlier, is probably a lesson,” Kennedy said just a few days ago. “We’ve not had a ton of success in extending our own guys. We have in the past and it’s been a great recipe for success. But I think starting those conversations earlier is a great idea.”
Craig Breslow Discusses Red Sox’s Outfield, Rotation
The Red Sox are open to adding another right-handed hitter to their outfield mix, chief baseball officer Craig Breslow tells Pete Abraham of the Boston Globe. To that end, Abraham reports that Boston remains in contact with free agent outfielder Adam Duvall’s camp.
Duvall had a solid, if volatile, 2023 season. Signed to a one-year, $7MM contract over the offseason, he was arguably the best hitter in MLB for the first couple weeks. Duvall ran a .455/.514/1.030 line over his first 37 plate appearances before fracturing a bone in his left wrist while diving for a fly ball. The injury cost him two months.
He was mired in an extended slump upon coming off the injured list, limping to a .175/.253/.313 showing through the All-Star Break. Duvall found his stride again coming out of the Break, raking at a .293/.349/.654 clip through the end of August. The year ended on a dismal note, as he struck out in over 40% of his plate appearances while hitting .149/.177/.324 from September 1 on.
Despite the extreme peaks and valleys, Duvall’s overall offensive production was well better than average. He hit 21 homers with a .247/.303/.531 slash in 353 plate appearances. Boston’s decision to give him nearly 500 innings in center field predictably didn’t work out well, as he rated between three and five runs below average by Statcast and Defensive Runs Saved. Duvall has been a plus defender in left field throughout the course of his career though. Between the strong corner outfield defense and 30-homer upside, he’s a valuable player despite high strikeout totals and subpar on-base marks.
The Angels are the only other team that has been publicly linked to Duvall this offseason. At age 35, it seems likely he’ll sign another one-year pact, although there’s an outside chance he lands a second guaranteed season.
Breslow wasn’t with the Sox when they signed Duvall last January. Yet the front office has sought right-handed power in the outfield throughout his first offseason at the helm. Boston already swung a trade for Tyler O’Neill. They were linked to Teoscar Hernández before he signed a one-year, $23.5MM pillow contract with the Dodgers. Duvall would be significantly cheaper.
Even as the Sox pursued Hernández, they’d pointed to the rotation as their biggest priority. Boston took a rebound flier on Lucas Giolito. Not long thereafter, they subtracted Chris Sale in the trade to add Vaughn Grissom from the Braves. While Giolito seems a safer bet than Sale to log a full workload, the pair of moves leaves the Sox with the same number of starters they had at the beginning of the winter.
Breslow told Abraham the current rotation consists of four pitchers: Giolito, Brayan Bello, Kutter Crawford and Nick Pivetta. That’d leave Garrett Whitlock, Tanner Houck and Josh Winckowski competing for the final spot. Offseason acquisitions Cooper Criswell and Max Castillo are among the depth options on the 40-man roster.
Of course, that’s not necessarily the mix they’ll take to Spring Training. Breslow conceded their efforts to add rotation help have thus far “been a challenge” but said they’re “still engaged in conversations with free agents and teams via trade.” The Sox have been loosely tied to top arms Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery (more so the latter) during the offseason, but more recent reports indicated they were looking at the next tiers down. With mid-level arms like Shota Imanaga and Marcus Stroman recently coming off the board, the free agent supply is dwindling beyond Snell and Montgomery.
That hints at payroll questions that have hung over the offseason. The Sox opened the 2023 season with a player payroll in the $181MM range, according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts. That ranked 12th in the majors, their first time outside the top 10 this century. Roster Resource projects their 2024 payroll in a similar range, a little under $178MM. They’re almost $40MM away from next year’s base luxury tax threshold.
An offseason headlined by Giolito and trade pickups of Grissom and O’Neill presumably isn’t what many in the fanbase envisioned. That’s especially true after team chairman Tom Werner vowed in early November the organization would go “full throttle” to put their two straight last place finishes behind them.
Werner walked that phrasing back in a conversation with Sean McAdam of MassLive this afternoon. “Maybe that wasn’t the most artful way of saying what I wanted to say, which is that we’re going to be pressing all levers to improve the team,” he said. “In the end, nobody’s happy with our performance the last few years. Some years, we go after somebody who is about to be a free agent, or was a free agent, as it pertains to Trevor Story or Raffy Devers.”
After noting the organization made an unsuccessful run at Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Werner added the Sox “certainly aren’t happy with the current roster as it was at the end of last year, so if I was going to say it again, I would say that we’re going to be pressing all levers and weren’t going to be happy with just one (method) — that includes free agency, trades or talent from Triple and Double A. … In the end, we don’t have a line in terms of our payroll that we look at as much as trusting that Craig is going to deliver on his assurance that we’re going to be competitive.“
Brayan Bello, Nick Pivetta Open To Extensions With Red Sox
The Red Sox are facing an uncertain offseason, with the first order of business surely being replacing chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom, who the club fired earlier this month. Once a new head of baseball operations is in place, however, it seems extension negotiations could be on their offseason list of tasks.
Alex Speier of the Boston Globe indicates that it is “likely” that the organization will open talks with young hurler Brayan Bello regarding a potential long-term deal this offseason. Speier also relays right-hander Nick Pivetta‘s thoughts on a possible long-term deal with Boston, with the 30-year-old speaking positively of the organization and saying, “You don’t leave any doors closed. Leave them all open and see where it goes.”
That Pivetta, who posted a brutal 6.30 ERA across the first six weeks of the season before being demoted to the bullpen, has finished his 2023 campaign as a potential extension candidate speaks volumes regarding his performance in recent months. Since his initial demotion to the bullpen, Pivetta has posted strong numbers over the course of 102 2/3 innings in a swing role that’s seen him make eight starts and 22 relief appearances. In that time, Pivetta posted a 3.16 ERA and 3.27 FIP with a massive 34.9% strikeout rate against a solid 7.7% walk rate. That’s good for a 27.2 K-BB% that’s outclassed only by Braves fireballer Spencer Strider among pitchers with at least 100 innings of work since May 21, the date of Pivetta’s first relief appearance.
Pivetta’s also managed to keep the excellent results up during the season’s final month, which saw him return to the club’s rotation on a regular basis. During the month of September, Pivetta has posted a 2.43 ERA with a 2.86 FIP and a 34.1% strikeout rate and a microscopic 4.0% walk rate. Pivetta’s fantastic finish to the 2023 campaign leaves him with overall numbers that give him the look of a solid mid-rotation starter. Among the 73 pitchers who have posted at least 140 innings of work this season, Pivetta’s 3.96 FIP ranks 32nd, his 4.04 ERA ranks 38th, and his 31.2% strikeout rate is bested only by Strider and Blake Snell.
Of course, with Pivetta already slated to hit free agency following the 2024 season, a potential extension would likely come at some sort of discount relative to full market value, though perhaps not a particularly steep one given the limited team control remaining. Last offseason’s free agent market saw mid-rotation arms like Jameson Taillon (4 years, $68MM) and Taijuan Walker (4 years, $72MM) both receive in the range of $70MM while sporting similar numbers to those Pivetta has posted the last two seasons, though both Taillon and Walker were younger than Pivetta will, who is set to hit free agency prior to his age-32 campaign.
As for Bello, the young right-hander posted solid numbers in his sophomore campaign, with a 4.24 ERA and 4.53 FIP across 157 innings of work. Those numbers are inflated by a brutal September that’s seen Bello allow 22 runs over 26 innings of work, resulting in a 7.62 ERA. Even so, Bello’s looked more like a fourth or fifth starter to this point in his career than anything else, with roughly league average results and peripherals. His most eye-catching stat is an impressive 56.2% ground ball rate, a figure topped by only Alex Cobb and Logan Webb among pitchers with at least 150 innings this year.
Between the mixed results to this point in his big league career, his youth, and his pre-arbitration status, recent comparisons are few and far between when considering what a Bello extension might look like. Freddy Peralta‘s five-year, $15.5MM extension is perhaps the nearest comparison, though Bello’s been better than Peralta was in the first two seasons of his career. Peralta had yet to reach 100 innings pitched in a season and had a career ERA+ nearly 15% lower than Bello’s at the time of his extension.