If hope springs eternal, then the 2024 Boston Red Sox feel more like a Slinky. Not really coiled to strike, more so poised to slink end over end down the stairs and the best you can hope for is that they complete their descent all the way to the bottom.
Every baseball fan should be filled with hope on Opening Day, heck even the Oakland A’s should have a spring in their step and they’re more likely than no losing their team. (Okay, maybe not Oakland, but everybody else deserves a bounce to their gait.) But I can’t remember a time that I am less enthusiastic for the start of a Red Sox season. After back to back last place finishes in the AL East, this offseason was supposed to be the moment that the Red Sox reloaded with talent and announced their presence with authority.
Instead, John Henry and Tom Warner have run the team like Rachel Phelps ran the Cleveland Indians; like they’re hoping attendance will be so low they can move the team back to Miami. (What if that’s what this was about, what if this was all an intricate ruse so that Henry, who used to own the Florida Marlins, could move the Red Sox to Jacksonville. It wouldn’t at all surprise me at this point if Henry had uniform mock-ups for the Jacksonville Jag Sox. “It’s a Jaguar that wears socks. I’m also partial to Kitten Mittens. The uniforms will be all pink. Fans in Boston bought pink hats like they were going out of style, imagine what we could do in Florida, what with all the lawn flamingos and Miami Vices!”)
Last Fall after the ouster of Chaim Bloom, Tom Warner said that the team was going “full throttle” this offseason. So far that has amounted to trading Alex Verdugo to the Yankees (YES!) signing Cooper Criswell (Who?) trading Chris Sale to Atlanta for No Vaughn Grissom (ok) and signing Lucas Giolito (who will miss the season due to injury, because of course he is.) They added Cardinals outfielder Tyler O’Neill who in his one healthy season finished 8th in NL MVP voting, the problem is that 2021 season is the only time in his 6-year career he’s played more than 100 games. I dunno, I expected Full Throttle to be a little fuller than this.
Jordan Montgomery was seen as a solid 3rd or 4th pitching option on the market this offseason. He’s still sitting on the market as I write this and the Red Sox still haven’t signed him. The reigning NL Cy Young winner Blake Snell was sitting out there last week, about to have a showcase his talents like he’d missed the last 3 seasons and was clawing his way back to the majors when the Giants finally relented and gave him a two year deal. This is all after the Sox found out that their new innings eater, Giolito, was going to miss the season. Montgomery has fallen into their lap and they’re brushing him away like an overly affectionate tabby who just climbed onto their woolen suit pants.
I punctuated any mention of the Red Sox last fall with “Now sign Shohei Ohtani for a billion dollars, you’re the Boston Red Sox, starting acting like it!” At this point, the Red sox wouldn’t even spring for the gambling debts of Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter. They didn’t trade for Juan Soto (the Yankees did) and they didn’t sign Yoshinobu Yamamoto (the Dodgers did). The Red Sox weren’t a major player this offseason and they won’t be a major player in the 2024 season. They’re punting on this year and they’re clearly thinking………I don’t know what the hell they’re thinking.
They’re hoping that the future is within the organization. They’re hoping for a second golden generation less than a decade removed from their last one. They’re hoping that their recently Bloom-built farm system will start baring fruit rather quickly. The first Big 3 in Boston was Bird, McHale and Parish. The second was Garnett, Pierce and Allen. The latest Big 3 is: Marcelo Mayer, Roman Anthony and Kyle Teel.
The top 3 prospects in the Red Sox system now hold the future of the franchise in their hands, because aside from them, there ain’t anybody else coming in to help. Needless to say this is a lot to put on 3 kids, which is what they are. Mayer, the Sox top pick 3 years ago is just 21, Roman Anthony doesn’t turn 20 until May and Teel is actually the oldest of the bunch as a recently christened 22-year old, although a year ago he was catching games for the University of Virginia. Hadlock and Polar Park might be hotter destinations this year than Fenway Park.
There’s no help coming, so what do the 2024 Red Sox have to offer? Let’s look at some positives.
- Tristan Casas seems poised for a break out season. After a dreadful start, Casas was one of the best hitters in the American League the second half of last year. He needs to take that next step this season and continue that upward trajectory, if he does, he could become a Freddie Freeman type offensive force.
- I’m not high on the prospects of the Trevor Story bounce back season, mostly because it’s been two years of injuries and strike outs since he came to Boston, but his defense alone should help the infield a lot. He’s been blow torching the baseball this spring, his best chance to live up to a modicum of the contract he signed is this season.
- The best move the Red Sox have made (and it’s not particularly close) is extending Brayan Bello. 6-years and $55-million for any starting pitcher seems like a deal these days and to get a guy who has the potential upside of being a top of the rotation starter is better value than getting a gift card to a restaurant you actually eat at.
- Andrew Bailey is the new pitching coach. Bailey apparently worked wonders for the San Francisco Giants during his time there, so if the arms that the Red Sox have could improve on their previous performances then that could spell more wins. The more we hear about the lack of what Dave Bush was doing the last few years in Boston, the more I think there’s a chance that a guy like Bailey could unlock key things for some of the arms in the organization. Maybe Nick Pivetta can pitch in the first inning now. Maybe Kutter Crawford can pitch 6 good innings every time out instead of 5. (I like Kutter, but the 5 and dive, leaving 4 innings to our bullpen every 5th day is like back when wrestling pay-per views were a thing and they’d let you watch the first 3 minutes free and you’d hope that they’d somehow screw up and let you watch the whole thing. (They never did.) That’s what watching Kutter Crawford is like.)
- Maybe Bailey can finally figure out the best ways to use Tanner Houck and Garrett Whitlock. I really like both guys, but after two years of trying to make them starters to, at best moderate success, this is the year to determine where their fate lays.
Whitlock was unhittable out of the bullpen in the magical season of 2021, as a starter he has been mediocre at best and at worst perpetually injured. Houck has been better as a starter, but always appears to have the power stuff of a good reliever or even a closer. Whitlock has been outstanding this spring, of the breakouts that I’m hoping for, Houck and Whitlock (best friends in real life) seem the most likely.
Which would be HUGE, because I could easily be talked into a rotation of Bello, Pivetta, Houck, Whitlock and Crawford not being that bad. I’m not saying they’d be the ’70 Orioles, but a good solid major league rotation who will give you a chance to win by putting a quality arm out there every day. (This is how far we’ve fallen, I just want reliably okay. No more opening pitchers named Kaleb Ort-kowski-phy-den)
- Devers had a down year last year (for him, he still finished with 33HR, 100RBI and hit .271 after a dreadful start) he’ll bounce back this year. The loss of Xander Bogaerts hit him the hardest, I expect him to be an All-Star and finish top 10 in MVP voting.
- How quickly has Masataka Yoshida become an afterthought? All the talk of him this offseason has been that he should or is, moving to DH. I didn’t think he was that poor in the outfield, plus the idea of a player of Yoshida’s stature as your DH just doesn’t feel right. It might be an outdated view point (okay, it definitely is) but I want my DH to look like Jose Canseco or Kevin Mitchell, not Scott Fletcher or Tim Teufel. I have hope that a year (with no WBC) and better acclimation to the demands of Major League Baseball will benefit the Macho Man greatly in his sophomore season.
- We should have traded Kenley Jansen. What do we need a $16-million closer for? That’s like putting mag wheels on the front yard ‘94 Dakota you use to plow the dooryard with. We’re paying Chris Martin half of that and he got Cy Young votes last season. You need to develop a bullpen (something I’ve been shouting from the mountain tops for 4 years now) and you can do it around Martin as well as you can Jansen. Trade Kenley before he gets hurt and loses all his value. There will be a contender who would love to have him, use Jansen as a trade chip to get a good prospect in return. Have a setup/closer combo like Martin & Jansen is a luxury we really don’t need with the state of the rest of the roster.
- Can Jaren Duran put together an entire season? (I honestly don’t know, I’m asking. My dad thinks he’s the best centerfielder in baseball. Which makes the existence of Ceddanne Rafaela really hard to explain.)
- I kind of like Wilyer Abreu. (But that could be a spring fling.)
- Do we have a catcher? (Not really psyched about another Connor Wong campaign, but we’re just biding out time until Kyle Teel takes over. We could see him in Boston by the end of the 2024 season.)
To quote another legendary Sterling, (John Sterling) “What did I see wrong?” Before the season starts, I always look at the baseball season as, at least we get a game almost every day for the next 6 months and if we’re lucky some really fun ones in October. I want to be wrong about where this team is so badly, though at the same time, if I’m wrong and we’re all wrong (there isn’t much optimism across New England for this team currently) then I’ll feel like everything is upside down. If this team some how roared to a pennant, I would be ecstatic, though also a little peeved that these ridiculous owners some how got it right.
Maybe they’ll prove us all wrong. Maybe Bello will be in the running for the Cy Young. Maybe Tristan Casas will battle teammate Rafael Devers for the MVP and the batting title down to the final day of the season. Maybe Ceddanne Rafaela will win his first Gold Glove. Maybe Jaren Duran will make his first All-Star team. Maybe Kyle Teel and Roman Anthony will be called up and inject the Red Sox with the same thing that Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson did for Baltimore.
If all of those things happened, maybe we’d get to play in October. Maybe.