Are The Red Sox Good Enough Defensively?

With the roster seemingly all set it might be time to uncover our eyes

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The Red Sox might not be finished yet this off-season. There is time and there are rumors, maybe a Mitch Moreland reunion, maybe an Andrew Benintendi trade, maybe another reliever or a starter on a minor league deal. Any of it could happen. All of it could happen! But right now a Benintendi deal and whatever fallout happens after that seems unlikely, and nothing else we’ve seen rumored will alter the basic structure of the team. So, folks, I think this is probably it. The 2021 Boston Red Sox are here. And looking over the team, well, it’s not bad.

For a team coming off a last place finish and about to pick fourth overall in the draft, they look like they could be surprisingly competitive. I don’t say that lightly. I know people have high expectations for the Red Sox. I get that. But this team with this front office in this COVID environment was never going to go nuts and sign George Springer, Marcus Semien, and Trevor Bauer. That or anything like it just wasn’t going to happen. So considering all that, what we have now doesn’t look so bad. And hopefully this is the start of something rather than just, well, something.

This team could hit. Rafael Devers, Xander Bogaerts, JD Martinez, and Alex Verdugo isn’t a bad top of the lineup, and then there’s Benintendi, and Christian Vazquez to lengthen things out. Beyond that, Bobby Dalbec and Enrique Hernandez could be fun. I’m less excited about Hunter Refroe, but it can’t all be unicorns and rainbows, right? The end result should be an above average team with the bats.

The pitching staff has some potential as well. There isn’t a ton of ace talent, but a top three of Nathan Eovaldi, Eduardo Rodriguez, and Garrett Richards has above league average potential if we’re talking about ceiling. The back of the rotation is less exciting with Nick Pivetta and Martin Perez, but even there it’s possible the team could unlock something with Pivetta, who’s stuff has never been questioned so much as what he’s done with it. And Perez is a perfect cromulent fifth starter, so, sure [shruggy emoji]. And if something happens there’s depth for the depth for the depth which should save us from something like Mike Kickham on the mound, which if I see it again, I will seriously purchase and then kick a ham.

The bullpen is a bullpen and bullpens are notoriously difficult to project, but I do like Matt Barnes and the pickup of Adam Ottavino was, I think, inspired. Beyond that, there’s a lot of ifs and maybes, but like I said, it’s a bullpen, and there is some depth in the minors if things don’t work out with individual spots. Bullpens are also the easiest thing to tinker with on the fly so I tend to worry less about this, at least right now in January.

There is one thing I do worry about though, and I think it could make things particularly difficult for what could be a decent team, and that is team defense. The Red Sox were a very good defensive team in 2018. They took a step back to just good in 2019, and then another step back to a hair below league average in 2020. Now, they’re likely to be short Jackie Bradley, Jr. in center, and with a rookie at first base. Hunter Renfroe’s defensive numbers in right field are mostly bad, though with an odd single great season in 2019. Benintendi, as has been documented by the great Alex Speier of the Boston Globe, has been losing foot-speed over the last few seasons, so unless that reverses itself he’s not likely to be able to cover more ground in left.

Alex Verdugo is, I think, an above average right fielder, but in the Red Sox current defensive alignment, he’s not a right fielder, he’s the starting center fielder. He played 475 innings in center for the 2019 Dodgers, and the numbers were fine, but I have my doubts about him being above average defensively. If he can play there, then the advantage is that the Red Sox can find a good bat to put in right field. This’s because it’s easier to find a good hitting right fielder than a good hitting center fielder. So ok, great, but the Red Sox aren’t going to do that because they already have Hunter Renfroe penciled in for right field.

It’s possible Benintendi regains some foot speed and becomes his old above-average fielding self, Renfroe replays his 2019 numbers in right field, and Verdugo is league average in center. The whole there is an above average outfield. But that seems unlikely to me. We’ve got two corner outfielders who have been below average at their positions in recent seasons and a center fielder whose defensive ceiling is probably that of a league average center fielder. That’s a well below average group if that’s the way things fall.

In the infield, FanGraphs numbers absolutely hate Enrique Hernandez at second base. I have a hard time believing A) he’s that bad and, B) the Red Sox just gave him a two year contract to play the position (or at least to start there). So the truth is he’s probably not that bad (and SABR’s defensive index awards had him fourth overall for National League second baseman last season so that’s something). There’s also questions about first base where rookie Bobby Dalbec should, on paper, be able to handle the position, but until he plays more than the 23 games he played last season it’ll be hard to know for sure.

The left side of the infield is where a lot of concerns lie. Xander Bogaerts can handle shortstop, but he’s not especially rangy. SABR doesn’t like him, FanGraphs does, but having watched Xander over the years, he’s probably a hair below average. He’s certainly not hurting the team or anything close to that, but most of his value is coming out of his bat.

The big defensive question on the team though is Rafael Devers. Having watched just about every play Devers has ever made, he can play the position. He’ll never be Adrian Beltre, but he has the arm and he can go get the ball in just about any direction. He can do all the quick twitch actions you need to do at third, the problem is sometimes he just doesn’t do them. It could be youth or inexperience or some combination thereof, but whatever it is, the numbers on Devers’ defense are bad. That can’t inspire confidence going forward.

Despite that, Devers is just 24. He’s younger than Verdugo and he’s younger than Dalbec! So more patience is necessary. There’s reason to be optimistic about his defense long-term, but that doesn’t mean things will work out long-term or that things will work out defensively for Devers in 2021. There is real downside there.

So how good can this team be defensively? Going through it like this has made me feel a bit better about the infield. They’re not going to be great, but they can be average or even a hair above. The outfield scares me. If they re-sign Jackie Bradley, that pushes Verdugo into right field and I think that could be an above average defensive outfield, but with the way things are right now, there are real concerns. A bad or even below average defense means more hits, more strain and stress on the pitchers, longer innings, and all that bad stuff. Basically it means more losing. Bad fielding teams lose more. How much more is debatable but, if this team isn’t at least average on defense, they’re going to lose more than the pitching and hitting would suggest.