The Next Great Red Sox Team?

I have an easier time penciling in Grissom than Anthony, Mayer, or Teel. They may have higher upside, but he’s at least flashed ML bat. They gave a lot of road to go.

I almost put Grissom in at 2b but I would like to see a season of performance that leads to conclusion that yeah he's the guy. I love the trade as a perfect example if how to add to the core without giving up part of it.

The next great Red Sox team is the one that actually has good pitching, whenever that is.

The near future lineup is kind of easy to project:

DH: Devers
C: Teel
1B: Casas
2B: Grissom
SS: Mayer
3B: Story
LF: Yoshida
CF: Rafaela
RF: Anthony

The Sox have Story and Yoshida wrapped up thru 2027. Unless they dump one or the other the above scenario is the most likely scenario of 2025 - 2027.

Don't know if Story's arm will work for 3b. I would think if it's repaired it can be. It would allow for Devers to DH although that forces Yoshida into LF.

Then maybe Bleis is ready by then to replace Yoshida and Cespedes perhaps replaces Story as we're now talking 2028.

So the lineup could be a good lineup, but.....what does the pitching staff look like?

No idea. So until the pitching is as promising as the lineup, they truly can't have the next truly great Red Sox team.

At this point I could pencil in Bello if he stays healthy and that's about it. Don't know if Crawford becomes a mainstay who can consistently throw 150 plus innings per year. And beyond that who knows? Maybe Fitts develops or maybe he's just a pen guy. Same thing with Gonzalez or Perales, assuming they're even major leaguers. At some point the Sox are going to have to bite the bullen and sign free agent pitching because it's hard to see a lot of guys pushing from the minors up toward the majors very quickly. We'll see the impact of the new philosophy, etc, but I'm not expecting miracles or instant turnarounds.

What you're saying is very plausible but the sustainability piece is the toughest thing.

None of the 2004 starters were home grown, as I'm not counting Schilling who was drafted and developed in the Sox farm system about 18 years earlier.

The 2007 team had Lester as the 5th starter who contributed. They had some brief help fron Clay Buchholz and Kason Gabbard.

The 2013 team actually had 3 home grown starters in Lester, Buchholz, and Felix Doubront.

And the 2018 rotation was pretty much all trades and free agency although Brian Johnson had since spot starts.

They really haven't had that young influx of arms coming up around the same time giving them 5 or 6 years together of growing and blossoming.

Hard to see that scenario occurring within the next 5 years as it takes time to draft and develop pitching so I think they have to do what you suggested.

C - Teel/Wong (L/R)
1B - Casas (L)
2B - Story/Grissom (R/R)
SS - Mayer (L)
3B - Devers (L)
LF - Duran (L)
CF - Rafaela (R)
RF - Anthony (L)
DH - Yoshida (L)

-Grissom/Story/Rafaela are key to balancing all of the LHH.
-An OF of Duran/Rafaela/Anthony would be great defensively.

This core is controllable and cost-efficient. If Wilyer is a real contributor, it would make Duran/Yoshida more expendable. But the offensive core seems to be in a good place in terms of both control and cost-efficiency.

On the pitching side, I think the bullpen is in a pretty good place. There is solid AAA depth and plenty of control amongst the existing staff. Hopefully enough of the '24 bullpen (Houck, Whitlock, Winckowski, Campbell) show the upside to replace Jansen/Martin, which would free up an additional ~$25MM to be used elsewhere. If not, there is enough depth to spend on the back-end guys.

The rotation is the clear area of need, both now and in the future. Giolito and Pivetta could both be gone by next year, with no prospects knocking down the door for rotation spots.

Luckily, the lineup and bullpen both look to have enough depth, upside, and cost-efficient controllability to allow them to invest significantly in the rotation.

You absolutely cannot pencil in Mayer, Anthony, and Teel as regulars on a future World Series team. That is insane, and not remotely in line with the entire history of baseball prospects.

This is fair, but it is more like “the next chance at a great team.” And since we are talking guys barely out of their teens, we are looking years in the future. It is sort of scary…. Best case scenario is ~3 years from now. If these guys don’t reach their potential, it could be much more.

Looked at differently, your point that there is Devers and Casas just shows what talent drain we’ve seen the last 5 years.

Disagree. On this very board (well it was before the move to proboards, but you get it) people penciled in an outfield of Mookie, JBJ and Benny Bats and my god it was glorious.

People penciled in Xander and Devers.

Sure we also penciled in Lars, Rubby De La Rosa and Michael Bowden; shoot by my own projections Engle Belté should have already locked in his third MVP; but to unequivocally say it NEVER happens just isn’t true.

MLB carried a short piece on Casas' HR against Rodon today, encouraged by the fact that it was against a lefthander given that he'd hit "just .215/.361/.456" against them in 2023. Forget about the fact that the OBP was just about on par with what he did against righthanders.

I did a simple calculation. What if he'd had 3 more singles fall in somewhere in those 97 PAs? The batting line would have been .253/.392/.494 so that's all it would have taken to get him out of "just" territory. In other words in such a small sample it's not much more than noise.

MLB might be wise to leave the jargon behind and talk statistical sense to people. If they want knowledgeable fans they could help the process along instead of keeping them in the dark with the old talk.

Isn’t a small sample because he was being protected a bit? That would suggest the lefties he faced tended not to be elite lefties. I say this only to suggest you could as easily ask what happens if you add 3 or more ABs against top lefties… as opposed to the 3 dink singles.

Bit late to this and others have already addressed it.  

I wanted to add that this is not an all or nothing thought exercise.  It's not a choice between MBTA-R (our top-5) all making the majors as impact players or all of them failing.  

If just 3 of those 5 guys stick as average to above-average regulars, it adds a lot to the core already under control through 2028: Devers, Casas, Bello, Crawford, Houck, Winckowski.  Plus Story (opt out), and less projectable-production guys like Grissom, Duran, Abreu, Valdez, Wong. 

If just one of those 5 guys turns into a franchise or even quasi-franchise player, we're doing well.  Because by definition, adding to what we already have, it would give us a solid lineup-core and very good defense up the middle.