The 2021 Red Sox Season Begins!

Prepare for your questions to be answered, whether you'd like them to be or not

Thanks!

Hello Sox Outsider readers! I want to take a moment to say thank you to everyone who has signed up and has been reading and interacting here. It means a lot. I know people say that, and I’m sorry for the cliche but it’s actually true in this case. If you’re new to the newsletter, I hope you’ll subscribe and join me in the journey that is the 2021 Red Sox season.

The Sox Outsider Podcast

I want to let you know that you can subscribe to the Sox Outsider Podcast! It’s my Red Sox podcast where I talk to all sorts of people about the Red Sox, baseball, and whatever. So far I’ve had Rob Neyer, Michale Bowmann of the Ringer, Michael Clair of MLB.com, Chris Smith of MassLive, Craig Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus, Chris Hatfield of Sox Prospects, Chad Finn of The Boston Globe, Eno Sarris of The Athletic, and Joon Lee of ESPN! And that’s not even everyone. The guest list is truly amazing and absolutely the reason to subscribe. So please do! It’s available where ever you get your podcasts. I listen on Apple Podcasts, but there are lots of other good places. Here’s a list of sites that have Sox Outsider. Alternatively, you can go to your podcast provider of choice and search for “Sox Outsider” and it should pop right up.

A recent episode features one of my baseball writing heroes, Steven Goldman, the creator and star of the wonderful podcast, The Infinite Inning. We had a conversation that delved into baseball history, the upcoming season, the deep feelings behind losing great players, and of course we discussed Tony Womack. How could we not, right?

Then yesterday I recorded a season preview episode featuring just me! I went through the entire Red Sox roster, or thereabouts, and gave my thoughts on each player. Then I discussed Boston’s competition for the AL East, and wrapped up with some notable minor leaguers who could make an impact on the big club this season. You can check that out right here or specifically on Apple Podcasts right here.

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It Begins

Happy Opening Day! The 2021 baseball season is upon us and there are a bunch of listicles (article + list = listicle!) out ranking various parts of the teams. FanGraphs in particular has turned this into an art form, ranking every team by every position. You can just go to their front page and find 700 of the articles. I don’t mean this as criticism because I do think their ideas are worth discussion. So let’s look at those ideas and discuss them!

The Rotation

They have the Red Sox starting rotation ranked 16th, which scans correctly for me. I know a lot of people are down on the Sox rotation. They’re not the Dodgers, or anywhere close, but take a look at who other teams are running out there. The up-and-coming Blue Jays have a rotation featuring Ross Stripling, Steven Matz, and Tanner Roark who are surprisingly not all the same person. Or maybe they are and they’ll wear different false mustaches for each start. At least Garrett Richards and Nick Pivetta have some upside. Heck, the Yankees, who everyone expects to burn through the AL East like a cat meme on Twitter, have a guy coming off his second Tommy John Surgery, another guy who has pitched 35 innings total over the past two seasons, and Jordan Montgomery, who I’m surprised to learn is a pitcher and not a department store.

This Sox rotation isn’t going to rank among the best, but they can provide league average innings, and that’s not nothing. In fact, that was a water fountain in the desert last season. Eduardo Rodriguez and a half season of Chris Sale could be enough, with league average seasons from Garret Richards and Nick Pivetta, or whomever your Nick Pivetta substitute is, to push this rotation into the top 10 in baseball. Is that crazy talk? Maybe. There certainly is downside here as well. A good 3/5 of the opening day rotation could bomb out and be off the roster by July. It’s possible, but this season has always been a bit of a dice throw, not dissimilar in that way from the 2013 season. If Chaim Bloom & Co. (now there’s a high end department store!) can hit on a few of these guys the way that Ben Cherington hit on Mike Napoli, Shane Victorino, Koji Uehara, and Stephen Drew, well, now I’m off topic.

The Pen

The Boston bullpen is widely feared as well, and I get that, I do. But by FanGraphs rankings, Boston projects as the 13th best bullpen in baseball. That’s not great, but it’s not the 2020 Phillies who could turn vintage Eckersley into one of those old pedal pitching machines. There’s even some upside too, with Hirokazu Sawamura and his splitter, Adam Ottavino and his frisbee slider, and Darwinzon Hernandez, who for better or worse never allows a ball in play. Oh sure, there’s downside too, everything could go black and you could wake up in a bathtub of ice with one kidney, but the 2020 Phillies bullpen is always an option, waiting, lurking, slyly smiling from the car behind you in your rearview mirror. But the truth of it is, while this doesn’t project to be the best pen in the bigs by a long shot, they should be fine. They have some upside arms, they have depth for the inevitable injuries. And if the rest of the team performs they can always go out and get some guys at the deadline.

The Lineup

Now we get to the fun part. If you like dingers, and really, who doesn’t, this Red Sox team should be your jam. They led the Grapefruit League in homers (and maybe the Cactus League too, but I’m sorry, I can’t be bothered to look up Spring Training stats) and I don’t think it was a fluke. There are five legit guys with 30+ homer power in the starting lineup, and four guys who have hit 30 homers before in a big league season, in Xander Bogaerts, J.D. Martinez, Rafael Devers, and [drum roll], no way you guessed this, Hunter Renfroe, who hit 33 with the Padres in 2019. It’s not outlandish to think Bobby Dalbec could hit 30 as well, and there’s your five. And that five doesn’t include Alex Verdugo, Franchy Cordero, or Christian Vazquez, all of whom have 15-25 homers in them as well. Cordero could hit 35 rather easily as well if he can avoid stepping on a rake or falling down an elevator shaft.

So runs should come in bunches for this team. I think walks, and thus on-base percentage could be a bit of a problem for this team. Let me put this positively: they’re going to hit a lot of solo homers. Verdugo, Martinez, and Bogaerts project to put up good on-base percentages, but that’s about it. If Devers has the true breakout season we’re hoping for (and I’m on board with) he could deliver there as well, but the rest of the lineup isn’t going to be above average on-base guys. They’re going to have to hit for a lot of power to make up for that.

Put it all together…

When you put everything together it’s hard to see this team making a 2013 run, but I don’t think a Wild Card is out of the question. There’s upside in every portion of the roster, there is some star power despite my whining about Mookie Betts in a Dodgers uniform, and I do think this front office is extremely smart and capable, so they should be able to go out and make additions and upgrades as needed during the season, if the team’s play calls for it.

The Odds

BetOnline has released some odds, and while they’re betting odds, they give a good baseline as to what the general consensus is regarding the Red Sox chances to make any noise this season. According to BetOnline, Boston is 10/1 to win the AL East, 25/1 to win the AL Pennant, and 50/1 to win the World Series. I certainly don’t think any of those numbers are wildly off. FanGraphs mostly agrees, giving Boston an 8.6 percent chance to win the division and a 28.9 percent chance to capture a Wild Card spot.

I do think that sells Boston short a bit. They have a better shot to win the East than one out of 10. If I had ten chips, I’d probably put three down on New York, three on Tampa, and two each on Toronto and Boston. So I’m putting the odds higher, at 20 percent. They’re not the favorite by a long shot either way, but I do give them a better shot.

The consensus is the Yankees are heads above everyone else in the division. I’m not sure I’m buying. A) Can the Yankees can pitch much better than any other non-Orioles team in the division? And, B) can they stay healthy enough that their star players will put them over the top? Those are real questions and I don’t think there are easy answers. The one guy who I think is going to have a monster season is Gerrit Cole. I’m not sure I would have given him that contract, it take some guts to give any pitcher nine years, but this season is the reason you give him that deal. He’s the guy that puts them over the top if anyone does.

Individual Awards

To win the AL MVP, BetOnline says Xander Bogaerts is 25/1, Rafael Devers is 28/1, Alex Verdugo is 50/1, and J.D. Martinez is 66/1. Sure, whatever. There are two Red Sox pitchers on the list of potential AL Cy Young Award winners. They give Eduardo Rodriguez a 33/1 chance, and Nathan Eovaldi a 40/1 shot, which, I have to say, is crazy. That’s the same chance they give Shohei Ohtani, soooo… yeah. Chris Sale was 12/1 when they last released this list in mid-February, but apparently his slower than desired recovery from TJ surgery has removed him from the list entirely. If I had money, I’d put it on Devers to win the MVP, more than Bogaerts or Verdugo or Martinez. That’s based at least on age, but I think we’ve seen whatever breakouts the other guys are going to have. I think there’s more from Devers in there, even more than his 2019. We’ll see.

For wins, they have the Red Sox at 80.5 wins. FanGraphs’ 2021 season projections (a different thing than betting odds, I grant you) has Boston at 86 wins, while Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA projections pegs Boston for 80 wins. Personally, I’ll take the over on 80.5, but as I wrote a couple days ago, it’s not too difficult to see a scenario where things go badly and the under ends up happening. This team more than most Red Sox teams of recent vintage seems to have a wide variance of possible outcomes. Should certainly make for interesting watching! In the end, I’ll take 85 wins with a finish just outside the last Wild Card spot. Mark me down for an exciting season with some positive surprises though, and a good jumping off point to an exciting off-season and a run at the division title in 2022.

No matter what happens, I’m so excited to have baseball back, a full season of Red Sox baseball, and I’m so excited to share it with you, here at Sox Outsider. So please, subscribe to the newsletter, subscribe to the podcast, and follow along with me as the Red Sox make a run at the playoffs. Thanks for reading, everybody!