June 10 State of the Nation

There’s really two ways of looking at the State of the Nation right now:

Glass-half empty: The Red Sox are in the midst of yet another mediocre season and are already double-digit games besides the Orioles and the Yankees. Their pitching has regressed and the quality of the lineups they are sending out on a daily basis are not major-league caliber

Glass-half full: Despite a comical amount of injuries, the Red Sox are still playing competitive baseball and are just a game and a half out of the Wild Card. There is still plenty of time to make a push and many of the injured regulars will be back in the coming weeks.

Look, the Red Sox aren’t good. But they aren’t exactly bad either. I would describe them more as helpless. It’s just kind of sad watching Bobby Dalbec trot out to right field, or David Hamilton stumble around while being pressed into everyday shortstop duty, or Connor Wong and Dom Smith batting three-four in the order. With the exception of Jarren Duran and Rafael Devers , most of the guys in the regular lineup should not be everyday big league baseball players. Even Rob Refsnyder, who is having a great season, is best utilized as a lefty-masher in the weak half of a platoon rather than a three-hole hitter.

This is why I’m not worried about the offense. Despite being asked to do way too much, the role players have exceeded expectations. Wong, Refsnyder, and even Hamilton have all been well-above-average hitters, while Duran and Devers are each having career-best seasons. This is why despite all the injuries, the Red Sox are still 11th in runs and 9th in OPS. The reason they are not higher, however, is because replacement players like Garrett Cooper, Dom Smith, Bobby Dalbec, Pablo Reyes, Enmanuel Valdez and Jamie Westbrook have contributed practically nothing. Once the regulars return and push those guys to the bench or Triple-A, I have no doubt the Sox will be scoring runs in bunches

My biggest long-term concern, surprisingly, lies with the pitching staff. Despite ranking fifth in the majors in ERA, it’s clear that the ship is starting to sink. Yes, Tanner Houck is fantastic, and Nick Pivetta has been phenomenal despite a few bumps in the road, but there are legitimate concerns with the other three guys in the rotation. 

Let’s start with the guy I’m least worried about. Kutter Crawford was never going to be the Cy-Young caliber starter he looked like in April. He has OKish stuff, as none of his pitches stand out as exceptional, and his command comes and goes. He’s always profiled more as a back-end guy, and that’s been clear in his last three starts against three great offenses in which he’s had a 8.27 ERA.

Those starts, however, would look a lot better if not for two really bad pitches: A hanging curveball to Gunnar Henderson that resulted in a grand slam, and a middle-middle fastball to Ozzie Albies that was wacked for a three-run home run. Look, there’s going to be times where Crawford is going to give up some loud contact, and he just happened to throw the two worst pitches of his night in the two most critical points. It was also clear in that Braves start that he was running out of gas, and Alex Cora smartly gave him an extra two days before his next start against the Phillies tomorrow. He’s not an ace, but I have full confidence that Crawford can continue to be an above-average starter the rest of the season.

There’s really not much to say about Cooper Criswell. Over his last 5 starts, he has a 6.45 ERA despite only walking six batters. The league is figuring him out, because it’s really hard to succeed at the highest level when you are topping out at 91. It’s a classic example of someone being exactly who we thought they were. Criswell is a swingman and a depth arm forced to take the ball every five days, and there are going to be more rough outings in his future. 

That leaves Brayan Bello, the supposed ace of the staff. His command has been atrocious this year, leading to a sinker that has been absolutely battered and a changeup that has already been sent over the fence five times. The stuff is all there, but it doesn’t matter when you don’t know where it’s going. How many times has Bello fallen behind 1-0 or 2-0 and been forced to throw his sinker? It’s up to the pitching development team to figure out how to get Bello to throw better and more consistent strikes.

As far as the bullpen goes, it’s…. fine. Kenley Jansen has been phenomenal since his early-season meltdowns, which means the Red Sox could get a haul for him at the deadline. After him, however, Chris Martin has had a number of blowups and landed on the IL with anxiety, and Greg Weissert and Justin Slaten have been only O.K in recent weeks. In fact, the best reliever in the Red Sox bullpen may be Brennan Bernadino and his 1.03 ERA. The bullpen hasn’t had too many close games recently, but they’ve been generally effective in protecting leads. So I have no complaints. Except for Brad Keller.

Here’s the bottom line: In my heart, I know we should sell at the deadline. I don’t think this team has any chance of making a run at the playoffs, and I don’t want to move any of the prospects it would take to land an impact player. I still believe there’s a good baseball team here somewhere, but they may be too far out of it by the time they find it. Right now, I’m waiting to see what the Red Sox look like when they start to get their pieces back, and I hope by the All-Star break we have a better understanding of what direction we need to go in. Because the absolute worst thing would be to do nothing at the trade deadline. Again.

Memorial Day State of the Nation

The common saying around baseball is that the standings don’t matter until Memorial Day. Well, here we are, on the fourth Tuesday in May, and the Red Sox are right back where they started: A perfectly even, 27-27 record. It might seem simple to label the Red Sox as “mid,” because they have been hovering around the .500 mark practically the entire season, but the true state of the nation requires far more nuisance.

Look, the 2024 Red Sox are not going to win the World Series. That was never going to be the case, and any slight hope was dashed when Trevor Story went down with a season-ending shoulder injury. The team wasn’t designed to withstand injuries, and the replacements for Story, as well as to Triston Casas and Masataka Yoshida, have dragged down the entire offense:

Dom Smith: 66 OPS+

Garrett Cooper: 46 OPS+

Romy Gonzalez: 79 OPS+

Bobby Dalbec: 7 OPS+

Pablo Reyes: 28 OPS+

On most days this season, the Red Sox have given two or even three spots in their lineup to that collection of hitters. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the Red Sox also give everyday at-bats to Vaughn Grissom and Ceddane Rafaela, two hitters who have struggled in very different ways. For Rafaela, it’s clear that he is just overmattched by MLB pitching. He’s certainly had a few moments, but it’s hard for any hitter to succeed with a 42% chase rate and a 3% walk rate, especially when they are only in the fifth percentile in exit velocity. 

I am personally of the belief that Rafaela won’t be able to hit well enough to be an above-average regular, but you’re not going to help him by sending him down to Triple-A. If he’s going to figure it out, he’s going to have to do it at the MLB level. The results have been significantly better in May (.237/.256/.395) than April (.186/.218/.343), but it still comes with an abysmal 18/2 K/BB ratio. Rafaela is going to have to take his lumps, and hopefully by the end of the season we get a better idea of what kind of hitter he is moving forward.

Grissom, on the other hand, may have had an even rockier start. He missed the first month of the season with a groin injury, then lost 15 pounds with the flu right when he was ready to come back. It’s clear the turbulent start and weight loss has rendered Grissom a shell of himself, as he has just one extra-base hit in his first 17 games. The under-the-metric numbers show that there is a bit-of-bad luck involved, and this is a guy who has hit at every level, including the big leagues. I have no doubt that Grissom will be fine in the long run, and the biggest long-term sign may be that he has been slightly above-average defensivley, which was a major question when the Red Sox acquired him.

With the bottom of the order filled with cast-offs, Quad-A players, and 23 year-olds going through growing pains, there are really only four players in the lineup the Red Sox can count on. Of course, there’s Rafael Devers, having another terrific season despite little protection in the lineup behind him. There’s also Jarren Duran, who has continued to build upon his breakout 2023 season with top-of-the-line defense and baserunning as well as a 119 OPS+. Duran proved last year that he should be part of the team’s future, but his start to 2024 has raised his ceiling even further.

We all knew that Devers, Casas, and Duran were three players of what Craig Breslow constantly refers to as an “ exciting young core,” but the start of the season has shown that two more players should be included in the mix. Wilyer Abreu showed flashes of elite tools in his cup of coffee last September, and he has carried that over into this season. At the plate, he pairs an elite eye (77 percentile walk rate) with great exit velocity numbers, and he has already been worth 2 OAA in right field this season. There is still some swing-and-miss in his game and he is a non-factor against lefties, but all the makings of a really good player are already here.

Even more surprising than Abreu’s emergence has been that of Connor Wong. Wong was well-below-average at and behind the plate in 2023, but he has been almost an entirely different player in 2024. While his .333 batting average is clearly unsustainable, especially when you look at his underlying batted ball metrics, it points to significant strides made in his contact rate, as he has sliced his strikeout rate all the way from 33.3% to just 18.0%. On the defensive side, he continues to struggle with blocking, but he is once again at the top of the leaderboards in caught stealing, and he has made progress with his pitch framing. Wong will probably not be atop the league-leaders in hitting for the rest of his career, but he is looking like the perfect long-term compliment to top catching prospect Kyle Teel.

Long-term. That’s the lense I’m trying to view this 2024 Red Sox roster. So it doesn’t really matter that Tyler O’Neill has come back to earth, or that the 30-something-year-old depth guys aren’t pulling their weights. What we’re trying to do is identify who will be on the next great Red Sox team, and fortunately most of the pieces are already here. Casas and Devers will be in the middle of the lineup. Abreu and Duran will be patrolling the outfield. Wong and Teel will be doing the catching, and Grissom and Rafaela will factor in some way. The First Wave of Prospects, made up of Teel, Marcelo Mayer, and Roman Anthony, will provide even more firepower when they arrive in 2025, while Miguel Bleis and Yoelin Cespedes will hopefully put the finishing touches in the following years.

In 2024, however, scoring runs is going to be a slog. There is pretty much no right-handed power, and the young guys in the lineup are still figuring out how to navigate a MLB season. Casas coming back will help, but one supremely talented hitter can’t overcome a flawed lineup. That’s the bad news. The good news is that the young core of hitters is only getting better, and with waves of talented prospects making their way up the pipeline, they will be better equipped to deal with injuries next year.

The bigger question entering this year was with the pitching staff. Besides Brayan Bello, there were significant questions surrounding the rest of the pitchers in the rotation. When Lucas Giolito went down in spring training, the Red Sox went forward with four young starters in the rotation: Bello, Tanner Houck, Kutter Crawford and Garrett Whitlock. While Whitlock went down with a season-ending elbow injury, the Red Sox faith in Crawford and Houck has been rewarded. Crawford has slowed down in May, but he still has a 2.89 ERA with above-average strikeout and walk numbers. The overall profile still speaks more to a mid-rotation starter than a front-end one, but his newfound ability to get lefties out and work deep into games should pencil him into the Red Sox long-term rotation plans.

The most surprising development of the season, however, has been the complete 180 of Tanner Houck. After a 5.01 ERA in 2023, Houck has taken to the new pitching program more than anyone in the system. He’s throwing his splitter more for far greater results, forming a lethal combo with his slider. The result? A 1.90 ERA over 11 starts and just thirteen walks and one home run allowed in 71 innings. Everything about Houck’s early season success looks sustainable, and it’s not crazy to say that Houck has surpassed Bello at the center of the Red Sox rotation plans. 

This isn’t to say that Bello has been bad. All the tools are still there, but he is currently still working through the same growing pains that every young starter goes through. Poor command has led to a slight increase in walk rate and a 1.7 HR/9 rate. If not for the insane expectations placed on Bello due to the long-term extension and lack of support around him, these bumps wouldn’t even be reason to bat an eye. Bello will be fine, and along with Crawford and Houck, will fill out three spots of the Red Sox rotation for the foreseeable future.

Their ability to fill out the next two spots, however, will determine how quickly the Red Sox can achieve their ultimate goal. With three straight injury-plauged years, it’s likely that the ship has sailed on Whitlock starting. Nick Pivetta is a fine back-end starter, but with an expiring contract, the team would likely be better served moving him at the deadline. Cooper Criswell has been serviceable this season, but he’s nothing more than a depth arm. Simply put, the Red Sox should invest all their resources into finding their last two starters, which speaks to a larger issue on how committed ownership is that we are definitely not going to go into. 

I feel like I’ve talked a lot about the future in this piece, so let’s address the 2024 Red Sox. It’s been a rollercoaster season, from a strong opening West Coast trip to a terrible homestand to catching fire at the end of April to cooling off in the beginning of May to sweeping the Rays in the Trop to now losing three out of their last four. There is no denying this is a flawed team, but anytime you pitch as well as the Red Sox do, you have a chance to compete.

I can’t remember the last time the Red Sox had a bullpen this deep. They didn’t win these 2-1 games that they did on Sunday, where they got a tremendous performance from Tanner Houck and three shutdown innings from Justin Slaten, Chris Martin and Kenley Jansen. With those three at the back-end, Brennan Bernadino and Greg Weissert dominating in the middle innings, and Zach Kelly, Cam Booser, Isaiah Campbell and hopefully Liam Hendricks in the coming months, the pitching staff is night and day from where it was last year. 

The question of whether the Red Sox can actually make a run at this thing centers around the offense. You can’t expect to string wins together when you’re scoring only three runs a game. Casas should breathe new life into the lineup, but there are far more questions. If Rafaela can continue to progress, if Grissom can find his swing and regain his strength, if O’neill can be closer to his April self than May, if Duran and Abreu can keep up their hot starts: If all that happens, then yes, the Red Sox can be in this to the end.

That’s in the future though. Right now, the Red Sox need to navigate this next month until Casas' expected return. That means treading water against the Orioles, Yankees, Braves and Phillies and taking advantage of four-game sets against the White Sox and Tigers. If they are over .500 by June 21, then maybe it’s time to start believing. 

Gutpunches, Exasperation and Reasons For Hope: What Are These 2024 Boston Red Sox?

I’m tired. 

The first 18 games of the 2024 Red Sox has been a grind, an emotional rollercoaster,  a few good moments overshadowed by devastating injuries, mind-numbing mistakes and one gut-punch after the other. I want to be clear, I did not expect the Red Sox to contend this year. I believed that they could be a good team if everything went right. The bullpen was strong, the rotation was unproven but talented, and the lineup was going to score runs. The path to contention was there, but it completely collapsed when Trevor Story’s shoulder crashed down on the Angels stadium ground in the eighth game of the season. 

At that moment, I knew things were going to go downhill. Besides the Gold-Glove defense he provided, besides the right-handed power bat that the Red Sox desperately needed, Trevor Story left a leadership vacuum that the Red Sox simply could not fill. Yet the way the Red Sox have completely imploded since that fateful night is a reflection on the players, the coaching, and the ones who put this poorly constructed roster together.

The fact of the matter is that no roster should be an injury away from collapsing. No roster should be an injury from David Hamilton playing shortstop everyday, or Bobby Dalbec getting regulat at-bats. The Red Sox have had terrible injury luck this season, and we are still awaiting word on Rafael Devers, but they should have been prepared. They should have had better options. 

Then there are the mental mistakes. Not touching second base on a double-play. Not throwing to the wrong base. Not knowing how many outs there are. Getting picked off in critical situations. These are things that can’t happen at the big league level. Besides being embarrassing, it’s a reflection on coaching, both at the major-league level and throughout the system. The Orioles are every bit as young as the Red Sox, but they aren’t making these mistakes. The has been a problem for four years, and we can’t throw the blame on Carlos Febles any more. This is an organazational epidemic that needs to be overhauled.

While Breslow deserves blame for failing to adequate develop a contingency plan, he is far from the biggest problem. In fact, the Tyler O’Neill and Justin Slaten acquisitions look like strokes of genius, and the pitching staff has made the changes that we had hoped when Breslow and Bailey took over.  Many of the problems with this roster are residue from the Chaim Bloom era. Masataka Yoshida is a complete black hole on the roster, hogging the DH position and clogging the bases while showing no improvements in his ability to consistently drive the ball with authority. Kenley Jansen is a similar black hole at the end of the bullpen, still getting the highest leverage innings despite looking nothing like the Hall of Famer he was a few years ago. 

So the veterans are hurt or underperforming. How about the young guys? Where is the hope? Let’s break down the Red Sox young players into three categories:

Future All-Stars, Franchise Centerpieces: Triston Casas, Brayan Bello

The two biggest reasons to keep watching this season. Triston Casas looks like he’s ready to take that jump into a 130 OPS+, 30+ home run guy, while Bello continues to make strides towards being that number 2 type starter.

Solid Contributors: Kutter Crawford, Jarren Duran, Justin Slaten 

Kutter showed flashes last season, and while there are still concerns about his stamina and durability, you can’t argue with the results through his first four starts. Duran probably isn’t a leadoff hitter long-term, but he’s a plus-defender at each corner position and likely a slightly above-average bat. Justin Slaten has the best stuff in the Red Sox bullpen, and I’m all in on him as a long-term bullpen piece.

Jury Still Out: Wilyer Abreu, Connor Wong, Cedanne Rafaela, Tanner Houck, Garrett Whitlock, Vaughn Grissom

All of these guys have serious concerns, whether it be health (Whitlock), defense (Grissom) offensive upside (Rafaela, Wong), or consistency (Houck, Abreu). In a season like this, we need to find out who can make the jump to the second group and who is not worth penciling in on the team’s long-term plans. 

On top of all that, the next wave of talent isn’t that far away. I expect Kyle Teel and Marcelo Mayer in the majors by this year, with Roman Anthony having an outside chance if he proves to be in the Jackson Holliday/Wyatt Langford level of prospects\. Without any outside enforcements, the 2025 Red Sox could look like this:

RF Anthony

2B Grissom 

DH Devers

1B Casas

3B Story 

SS Mayer

LF Duran 

C Teel 

CF Rafaela 

That is a lineup that can be locked in for the next five years, and if all goes according to plan, can rival the Orioles and Braves for best home-grown core. 

Here’s the thing though: It’s embarrassing that we’re talking about 2025 on April 17, 2024. Yes, the team has had an almost comical amount of injuries, but there are organazational flaws and philosophies that need to be cleaned up. The team has shown an unwillingness to spend, an inability to properly evaluate outside talent, and a disinterest in fixing it’s teams biggest issues. There is enough on the current roster to be excited about, but becoming true contenders will take a lot more than just better luck.