The Boston Barometer: Volume 13
What I was pondering for a week in the DR.
While I was laying on beautiful beaches in the Dominican Republic, I kept thinking about what has happened with the Boston Red Sox. While I admit I probably should not have been thinking about the Red Sox on vacation, it’s a sickness that I wear like a badge of honor. So here are a few thoughts I’ve had over the last week.
1. Building Around Top Prospects Cannot Come with Expectations
The Boston Red Sox staked their entire rebuild, even though they refused to call it that, around high draft picks and top prospects. This plan all began when the Red Sox drafted Marcelo Mayer with the fourth overall pick in the 2021 draft. Since that moment, the Red Sox and their fans began formulating plans on how Mayer would be a key piece of the next core. Then came Ceddanne Rafaela and Tristan Casas, then Kristian Campbell, and finally Roman Anthony. This extremely young core was supposed to be like the previous core of Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts, and Jackie Bradley Jr. and bring the organization back to the top of the sport.
It just hasn’t gone according to the plan.
The young core is not to blame. Top prospects are no more than a roll of the dice on a craps table. Sure, some dice combinations have better odds but there is always the chance that you roll a 7 and you lose everything. Top prospects have the chance to become good everyday regulars and sometimes even stars. But they also have a chance to not be a big league caliber player and there really isn’t a linear equation to predict correctly.
When CBO Craig Breslow came to Boston, he inherited a great situation. He had a bunch of top prospects along with a deep farm system. The issue is not that Breslow decided to build around a bunch of prospects. The issue is Breslow decided to build around a group of prospects with expectations of building a winning baseball team at the same time as all of these talented prospects were learning the game at the big league level.
Photo Credit: Winslow Townson / Contributor / Getty Images
While it is possible to do both successfully, expecting both to happen is foolish. In a place like Boston where winning had become the expectation and resources are better than the majority of the league, teams like the Red Sox should never have a season like they are currently having. They have nobody to blame but themselves for going with a formula that has so much uncertainty.
The only way to improve the uncertainty of a situation like the one the Red Sox find themselves in is by supplementing the roster with quality veterans. Alex Bregman was that guy last year. Willson Contreras has been excellent this season but the roster needed more. There is so much pressure on these young players to learn and produce at the same time. It’s really an unfair situation to put these young players into and expect their confidence to remain unharmed by the Boston market.
2. Too Many Non-Big League Players on the Roster
If you look at the Red Sox lineup, it’s no wonder they have the worst run producing lineup in baseball at home. Here is their lineup from Friday night.
Mickey Gasper is not a regular big league bat (.648 OPS) and he is especially not a leadoff hitter. Isiah Kiner-Falefa hitting 6th with a .705 OPS and just 6 XBH on the season is an issue. Caleb Durbin was one of baseball’s worst hitters in baseball through the first two months. Carlos Narváez has an OPS of .553. And Andrew Monasterio is a fringe big league player. He’s a fine bench piece but he should not be getting regular ABs.
The issue is I haven’t even mentioned the options on the bench. Marcelo Mayer is an intriguing prospect however he has struggled mightily (.599 OPS). Connor Wong is a fringe backup catcher. Nate Eaton is nothing more than a fourth or fifth outfielder. And Masataka Yoshida is only capable of hitting singles (.329 SLG).
If you’re counting, that’s 9 of the 13 hitters on the Red Sox roster for Friday night that are either nothing more than backups or do not belong on a big league roster full time. There’s no way the Red Sox can consistently score with the players on the roster. Even when they have a good series like they did this weekend in Seattle, it doesn’t mean it will lead to the start of something. The reality is the Red Sox have too many significantly below average big league bats on the roster that make scoring nearly impossible against good big league pitching.
The days of a lineup in Boston that consists of hitters like Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts, J.D. Martinez, and a young Rafael Devers learning from a group of veterans is long gone.
While I do still like the core of young hitters the Red Sox have, they are still a long ways away from returning to a top tier offense. They need guys to take significant steps forward and they need to add legitimate proven pieces. I’m not confident either of those things will happen in the near future.