Meandering Thoughts as 2024 Ends
As the offseason arrives once again, it’s time for my annual song and dance: no CBT penalties for the Red Sox to worry about, the farm system is in good shape, the team has obvious, fixable needs, and this should be time for John Henry to step up and spend.
I watched this year's more subdued Red Sox end-of-season press conference on Monday. Kennedy, Breslow, and Cora seemed more confident about the upcoming roster maneuvering than I can force myself to be.
Between Breslow’s first year report card, everything he’s said in the last few weeks, hearing plugged-in people pooh-pooh the idea of spending big on a starting pitching contract, and every rumor I’ve been told about plans for this offseason landing somewhere on the spectrum between laughable and insane, I’m feeling much more cautious than cautiously optimistic.
Current Depth
Heading into winter, the starting pitcher depth looks solid on paper, but the lack of an ace is glaring. A fact reinforced just from watching the first few playoff wild card games this afternoon.
1: 🚨
2: Houck
3: Bello
4: Crawford
5: Giolito
Bullpen swingman: Criswell
Top of Worcester’s rotation: Priester, Fitts, Dobbins
Top of Portland’s rotation: Sandlin, Early
I wonder if someone (Crawford?) sneakily shows up in trade talks, especially in discussions for a more top of the rotation type. I’m bullish on finding a way to get Priester into the rotation.
Tanner Houck
Houck had a strong breakthrough season. Though, the heavy lifting was done in April, where the stars seemed to align in such a fashion that it’s difficult to imagine happening again for a prolonged period of time. The 41 K, 5 BB, 1 HR month, with 27% Whiff and 26% PutAway were not carried over through the finale five months, where it was 113 K, 43 BB, 10 HR, 21% Whiff, and 19% PutAway.
May-September still produced a good 3.55 ERA, 3.68 FIP, and 3.82 xFIP, though that was more in line with his surprisingly pedestrian 4.05 xERA for the year.
We’re already hearing talk of adding “depth” to the rotation, how the team thinks they're good at identifying starting pitchers they believe they can tweak into improvements, and that they liked how their own starters showed top of the rotation results at different times this season………..
To me, ideally, Houck would pitch in the middle of a rotation. But, in this day and age of baseball, where the starting pitching talent falls off dramatically after the upper echelon, he’s probably going into 2025 pitching out of the #2 slot in most rotations, with teams crossing their fingers about results breaking the right way again.
Brayan Bello
Bello’s season was catastrophically derailed by an unbelievable stretch from mid-May to mid-June where he allowed 33 ER in 39 IP.
Before that, 3.13 ERA in 31 innings, after that, 3.66 ERA in 91 innings. My hopes were astronomical for the Bailey-Bello collaboration, and the whole package just never fully came together. After a year of experimentation with his repertoire, especially his increased slider usage that ended up with a 34% whiff rate — to go along with his filthy changeup — I’m expecting a much smoother 2025.
I'll also note, despite a challenging season, with his long-term contract, Bello is still a highly valuable asset, possessing some of the greatest surplus value among MLB pitchers.
The Big Two
It seems highly unlikely that the Red Sox will end up deep in the bidding for Corbin Burnes or Max Fried in free agency this winter. Burnes’ contract sounds like it’s going to be enormous, and some of his peripherals are scary, even though he’s shown an impressive late season dominance resurgence.
Fried, however, would be an ideal top of the rotation target if the Red Sox were still a serious organization and would spend money to fix the need, rather than having to sacrifice meticulously cultivated talent to acquire it.
Jarren Duran
Duran had an unbelievable year. Immensely valuable. Turned himself into an elite center fielder, playing that spot 57% of his defensive innings. Impressive trends across the board offensively, especially
.121 → .142 → .187 → .207 Isolated Power
36% → 28% → 25% → 22% Strikeout Rate
.250 → .286 → .323 → .346 xwOBA
He was fine in April and May (105 wRC+), had a bonkers June (191), was excellent in July and August (156), and was one of the many September busts (61).
I ran a poll two weeks ago asking if people would offer Duran in a trade involving the Seattle starters. 2,500 people responded, and the results indicated that 45% would only offer Duran for a True Ace™, 33% would be open to shopping a level down from that, and 22% would keep Duran off the table.
It seems like a near zero chance of Duran being able to fetch one of his surplus value peers. The Strider, Skubal, Skenes, Gilbert, Ragans, Kirby, Webb level.
That makes threading a trade needle impossible unless you’re willing to take a leap of faith on a young pitcher in the mold of Brandon Pfaadt, Bryce Miller, Bryan Woo, Spencer Schwellenbach, Jared Jones, Andrew Abbott, etc, etc, etc. Maybe no team would trade a pitcher of this control/talent/upside for Duran, maybe a couple teams would, maybe one would. Maybe the Red Sox simply cross off the idea if a 2017 Chis Sale isn’t available.
I think it’s easy to say you wouldn’t do a trade like that in the hypothetical stage. If you’re at the winter meetings and the Pirates decide to offer 5 years of Jones for 4 years of arbitration Duran, I think that is hard to decline. You theoretically would have the front, middle, and back of your rotation locked in cheap for the Devers and Co. prime. You’d be able to redirect funds to every part of the roster that aren’t being filled by your elite position player prospects. Not only that, but you have literally the No. 1 prospect in baseball to seamlessly slide into Duran’s vacated role.
Again, threading the needle like that is unlikely. The pitchers’ names I used are proxies for pitchers of similar values across the baseball landscape. If something like that pops up this winter, and a shock blockbuster happens, I think the line of thinking above is the rational.
Besides trading Duran or Anthony, it’s hard to imagine anyone else bringing enough in return for the foundational rotation help needed to truly elevate the team.
Ceddanne Rafaela
Between 1984 and 2024, Rafaela's .274 on-base percentage is the lowest in a qualified season by a Red Sox batter, 8 points lower than Mike Aviles' OBP in 2012, and 15 points below Carl Crawford's 2011 and Eduardo Nunez's 2018.
In terms of walk rates, Rafaela's 2.6% was among the lowest in Red Sox history, narrowly edging out Shano Collins in 1922, Hobe Ferris in 1906 and 1907, Freddy Parent in 1903, and Everett Scott in 1918.
Making matters worse, this year he also posted the fifth-highest strikeout rate by a qualified Red Sox batter since 1984, and chased pitches out of the zone at a 46% rate, last in MLB.
While not impossible, it’s hard to imagine Rafaela’s free swinging to improve dramatically enough to take him out from near the bottom of the league. An easier path to improvement would be to stop taking, swinging and missing, fouling off, or mis-hitting pitches he sees in the strike zone. He was a team-worst -15 Batter Runs on fastballs (4-seam, sinker, or cutter) in the zone this year.
How much improvement in that area would move the needle for him overall is TBD, but at least it’s a path.
Yesterday, Cora joked that Rafaela “played 150 games at 120 pounds.” He also said he thinks the team defense would be best with him playing 150 games in center field.
Is it possible that the team would just fit and work better with him in a super utility role, especially if the Sox can acquire a premiere right-handed bat, which could allow for an all left-handed hitting outfield of Anthony-Duran-Abreu?
Chaim Bloom, STL
With all the changes seemingly coming to the Cardinals, you naturally look at their players and try to find matches. Due to contracts being horrendous, player handedness, or positions of need, there are few matches there.
My favorite idea would be trading for Willson Contreras and turning him into a sort of V-Mart 2.0, that would be the elite all-around right-handed bat in the middle of the order. He could DH a lot, take a backup catching workload, and sprinkle in some games at first base. The cost would be painful, and worth it. Playing around with how a lineup works with him hitting between Devers and Casas, and how deep the lineup gets, is very intriguing.
A longer play roll of the dice could be Jordan Walker. He looked like a monster coming out of Double-A in 2022, but was rushed to the majors and has suffered back-to-back rough seasons between AAA and MLB. He would be a bat-first reclamation project, with his fielding in the outfield looking borderline disastrous, negating his bazooka arm. He’s 22-years-old well into next season, so taking a chance on him would need to be a substantial trade, presumably offering Bloom some of his favorites left behind in Boston.
Catching
Wong had a clear downturn with his bat during the second half of the season, illustrated by his monthly wRC+: 162, 114, 152, 82, 75, 93
Even though the metrics don’t show strong support for is offense, he made clear strides this season, finishing .280/.333/.425, 110 wRC+.
Wong led MLB batters in Strikeout Rate drop from 2023 to 2024, going from 33% to 23%. He was also in the top 10 of reducing Out of Zone Swing %, and top 20 of increasing In-Zone Contact %.
It should be noted, he was a miserable hitter when playing out of position or pinch hitting.
The bigger question with Wong, however, is why the Red Sox have been unable to develop such an insanely athletic catcher defensively? His framing and blocking actually regressed, going from bad in 2023 to horrific in 2024.
Is that now a concern as the team tries to improve Kyle Teel’s defense?
I wouldn’t be stunned if Wong and/or Teel eventually showed up in trade talks this winter, but pushing that scenario aside, going into 2025 with Wong catching, a backup catcher in place, and Teel starting in AAA seems the most likely path. A hot month or two from Teel, and he forces himself into the major league equation.
Missing Out
173 IP, 2.91 ERA, 3.46 xERA, 3.0 WAR, 1.02 WHIP, 25% K, 4% BB
2025 will probably be pretty damn successful if there is a drastic reduction of “feel good stories” actually having to play in Boston.
There’s going to be plenty of time to discuss the inevitable wave of Casas and Abreu trade proposals that are sure to be kicked around. Hard to overstate how much I hate the idea of trading Casas. On the 310 to Left podcast today, Cora talked about needing to balance the lineup, and how not many lefties in baseball can do what Raffy and Casas do at Fenway. Ahhh, yeah, that’s why they should be hitting 2nd and 4th here for a long ass time.
The bullpen will get its own post at some point with how much there is to sort out there. It feels like they are sick of the lefty situation and want a monster from that side out of the pen. If and how that happens, who knows.
Next up will be the annual fan survey I run. If you think you have an interesting question you’d like to see included, reach out, and I’ll pick a couple.