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.
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