When Chaim Bloom was hired to take over the Boston Red Sox, we knew there would be roster turnover. Three years later, the 2019 Red Sox have been almost entirely erased, as if Michael J. Fox were holding a team photo in an 80s movie. The only remaining players from that 2019 team are Rafael Devers and Chris Sale. Everyone else has moved on in some fashion or another.
This off-season helped in that regard, from the mismanagement of the Xander Bogaerts situation to the DFA’ing of Matt Barnes. So, with Devers now extended, short of Chris Sale’s exit, this roster is completely Chaim Bloom’s doing. And it seems people aren’t that jazzed about it! And I get that! But if you sit down and look the roster over, and I mean really look it over, you’ll see that maybe things aren’t so disastrously disastrous after all.
Maybe.
To that end, I thought I’d throw some positivity your way and start off your week by looking at the positives of the Red Sox roster. Let me know if you want to see the inverse in your in-box sometime soon or if you’d rather just hit yourself in the neck with a chair.
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Let’s start with:
Triston Casas
Casas is, depending on who you talk to, a top 20ish prospect in baseball, and that’s as a first baseman. Which means he’s not bringing much value with the glove so to rank that high the experts gotta think he can really hit. Casas is a hulking giant hulk of a man who crushes pitches into the outer reaches of the solar system.
He has power to all fields, and he’s extremely picky about which pitches he swings at, something called plate discipline, a thing the Red Sox haven’t dabbled in for a while.
I’m optimistic about Casas hitting the ground running. He may not be able to put his full power on display immediately, but he’s going to get on base and make an impact in the middle (ish) of the lineup. In 2022, the Red Sox got nothing from first base as a whole. Casas turns that negative into a positive.
Rafael Devers
Devers will be 26 years old during the 2023 season, essentially entering his peak seasons. There is an almost Vlad Guerrero Sr-ish season lurking somewhere inside Devers. I’m sure of it. A slash line that starts with a 300 average and ends with a 600 slugging percentage.
Last season we started to see what Devers was capable of. He was hitting .324/.379/.602 in late July before injuring his hamstring. He missed some time immediately after, but he wasn’t the same hitter when he came back from the IL, putting up a .702 OPS the rest of the way.
Last year I joked on Twitter about Devers winning the AL MVP award. That’ll be a tough one given the competition (Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, etc) but at the time of his injury Devers was right there with Judge in terms of OPS and WAR, which is staggering when you think of where Judge finished. A full and healthy season from Devers will show the world the Red Sox signed the right guy (to be clear Mookie and Xander were also right guys) to anchor their lineup for the next decade.
Masataka Yoshida
Have you seen the FanGraphs projections for Yoshida? If the worst of them is correct the Red Sox have an impactful bat on their hands and under club control for five seasons. Like Casas, Yoshida will bring some plate discipline and on-base skills to a lineup that sorely needs it. Imagine players getting on base in front of Rafael Devers! I mean, really close your eyes and think about that. Rafael Devers walking up to the plate with runners on… welcome to my happy place.
Yoshida should be able to get on base and if pitchers decide to challenge him, he should be able to put the ball off of and occasionally over the Monster. At this point let’s just come right out and say it: the Red Sox need him to replace Xander Bogaerts. That’s a tough ask, but it’s where the Red Sox are right now. We’ll see how it goes, but reading about the player’s time in Japan and looking at those projections should provide sufficient room for optimistic thinking.
Chris Sale
Since signing his contract extension in March of 2019, Sale has thrown 195.2 innings. In the three seasons since the start of the 2020 season Sale has managed 48.1 total innings. But now he’s healthy. So maybe, as they say, the 17th time is the charm. Maybe that guy who tried to sell me a bridge for five bucks really owns a bridge he needs to offload right now. Maybe rabbits feet are actually good luck, and tossing a penny in a fountain at the mall will really alter the future in your favor.
The point is Sale has endured all manner of injuries over the past four seasons from Tommy John surgery, to a broken pinkie finger on a come-backer, to that time he stole second base and was mauled by a tiger.
It’s hard to remember because it was so long ago, but Sale used to be really really good, one of the best pitchers in baseball. It’s possible that, given all his time off and his newfound health (knock on wood cross your fingers throw salt over your shoulder! DO IT NOW!) he’ll be back to what he was, the guy the Red Sox traded half their farm system for back in December of 2016.
Garrett Whitlock
I’m not putting Whitlock here because I think he’s going to be a second ace to the now newly healthy Sale (more knocking on wood rabbit paws salt the whole bit do it do it do it!). Instead let’s look more realistically: Whitlock can be that middle of the rotation presence the Red Sox lacked last season following the departure of Eduardo Rodriguez. How’s that for exciting?!
Can he be better than that? Sure! Let’s go with that! But I’m not expecting it. He’s extremely capable of putting up 180 innings that are 10 percent better than league average, so maybe that’s a number three starter, a number two, or whatever, but that’s what I think Whitlock can do. That’s what Chris Bassitt, Gerrit Cole, and Kevin Gausman all did last season, more or less. Those are heady names, to be sure, but I think Whitlock can meet that kind of challenge.
The Rest of the Starting Staff
This isn’t the kind of starting rotation you’d assemble if you could avoid it. There are three starters coming off of surgery. Two who effectively didn’t pitch last season. One who is transitioning from the bullpen, and one who spent most of last season in the minors. And yet, am I wrong to feel some sense of optimism about this group?(answer: yes) While there are questions about them all, they all have track records of success, track records where you don’t have to squint hard to see them having a good season on an individual level.
The issue is when you start to need multiple players to stay healthy and perform well. Multiple being like five. Stranger things have happened than a group like this gelling and giving the team a good rotation. Would you rather have the Blue Jays, Yankees, or Rays rotation? Maybe. Probably. But it wouldn’t shock me if, when the season is done, this group has out-pitched a few of those rotations.
The Bullpen
Last year’s pen was a disaster, but the 2023 pen should be better. I’m not so far gone where I’d say this is going to be a great bullpen, but I do think league average or slightly above is within reach. Holdovers John Schreiber, Tanner Houck, and Ryan Brasier (don’t ask me why) will be joined by ex-Dodgers Kenley Jansen and Chris Martin. Toss in Wyatt Mills (shrugs) and a hopefully healthy Kutter Crawford and there’s something solid here to hold on to. Plus, the farm system has a few names that could be impactful as the season goes on in Bryan Matta, Kaleb Ort, and Frank German. So the Nasty Boys this ain’t, but there should be some league average or slightly above innings coming out of here, and that should be enough to keep Boston’s collective blood pressure to a reasonable number.
* * *
I hope this didn’t come off as a bunch of cheerleading. I think the takeaway is there’s a scenario where this team is pretty good. Now, there is definitely a scenario where this team is not good, where the rotation is hurt, the bullpen doesn’t improve much, Yoshida isn’t good, and all the other spots on the field where the team just needs to hold down the fort for a bit (think middle infield and catcher) are black holes of suckitude.
All of that is very possible, and probably just as possible as the positive scenario. But as 2013 shows us, good things can happen. Teams can be the best of all possible outcomes. I think that’s where this team is right now. They’re going to need a lot to go right, and they’re going to be very susceptible to things that don’t go right, but the path is there. It’s right there.
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I’ll admit I have a lot of questions but your “glass half-full” (instead of “half-empty”) has me jazzed!
Great stuff, Matt, thanks.
Agree with all of this, but I’d have included Brayan Bello, who has the stuff to really break out this year.
Lots of questions on this staff, but also lots of options