Predicting The 2025 Opening Day Roster

Exactly. At some point you have to trade from a position of strength to address glaring areas of weakness. The Red Sox are the envy of most of baseball with their collection of young, controllable position players, but this roster desperately needs starting pitching, relief pitching, and right-handed power.

Right. Houck is a middle-of-the-road #1 pitcher, Bello is a middle-of-the-road #2, and the rest of the staff are very competent middle-to-back-of-the-rotation starters. I'm coming around to the opinion that doubling down on this strategy is how you end up with a juggernaut of a .500 team. Again.

Who do you think that is?

Looking at the current free agent crop, I'm intrigued by Yusei Kikuchi. Probably won't cost more than 3-4 years at $15-$20 million, won't cost a draft pick, and has been pretty effective down the stretch for Houston. He's also pitched effectively in the AL East.

Abreu, Masa, Wong all good players that may be passed by June by better players coming up. all have value, even Masa with his contract.
none on their own, or perhaps even all together, return a TOR pitcher.

Pivetta looking more appealing for 3/$45?

Personally I think you nailed it, a team needs a 4th OFer anyway so I have no problems at all with a guy who accumulates 3 WAR in 400 or so PAs that has a strong platoon partner/ 4th OFer that can mash lefties. For reference the Sox accumulated 6.7 fWAR in RF which was 6th in the MLB, if I ran my search correctly anyway. The next highest team was Tampa at 4.3. Not really sure how that math adds up for the 6.7 fWAR? Since Abreu was slightly less than half that, it makes sense why I and many on the board are conflicted at the idea of dealing Abreu. Not to mention there is the very real possibility that Abreu can improve enough vs lefties to at least be playable more often than not out there. 

Refsnyder had 1.2 fWAR in 93 games only 20 starts in RF. The fWAR breakout is Abreu 3.1, O'Neill 2.4 and Refsnyder at 1.2 fWAR in RF. That's just their yearly WAR totals though so now that I look into how that got totaled it's not a correct representation since O'Neill and Ref played other positions than RF. Still would probably add up to 4+ fWAR in RF this year for the Sox if somehow you actually parsed all their WAR totals for who was playing RF and when. 

Couple things here, no there is no such thing a sure thing with prospects so I'm not personally penciling Anthony in for anything. Also Anthony could be playing the bulk of his time in LF since Duran, and Rafaela are both better defenders.


Abreu doesn't make sense to me as a 4th OFer if two of the other OFers playing the bulk of the time are going to be LHH in Duran and Anthony. I guess you could go with an all LHH OF vs righties but it sounds to me like Breslow wants to try and balance the lineup. Would be very hard to do with an all LHH OF playing the bulk of the games. 

If we're removing the likelihood Anthony or Duran are dealt which IMO we should then yes Abreu makes the most sense to trade this offseason this has been where I think all roads lead to but you have to find the right trade partner willing to pay his value or near his value. 

When you're snowed in with nothing to do and someone on Twitter has a novel theory about the meaning behind Juan Soto's wife's Instagram beach vacation pictures you'll get sucked right back in.

Ownership could operate in 1 of 2 ways..

1. Make smaller moves, have the kids come up and hope they produce as rookies and hope it's good enough to "compete" into late Aug and maybe sneak in (maybe not) while being much lower in payroll than they should

2. See this as the beginning of a strong window to compete with the leagues best and supplement this young core with aggressive moves and actually get into the top 3 or 4 in payroll.

As of now? I'd be stunned if they pick option 2. Henry doesn't seem to worried about competing.

I am bewildered by the sentiment on this board that the Sox are almost there and that there don't need to be many upgrades to get them to the promised land. First, I don't think making the playoffs should be the goal. Winning the World Series should be the goal. Second, with three games left in the season they are 80-79. It is a .500 team and it's hard to find ways to improve? Yes, there were a lot of injuries. But all that shows is that the team did not make adequate decisions regarding depth players. They did not resign Turner and thus when Casas got hurt we got Dalbec, and others they had to pull off the scrap heap.  
With regards to starting pitching, which was a weakness the year before, they lost Sale and Paxton and signed only Giolito. His injury left them a starter short in April. And the starters they have coming back are not championship caliber ( excepting Houck) or totally unproven.

Which rotation would you rather have:

Sale, Price, Porcello, Eovaldi, and Rodriguez (2018 Championship rotation)
Houck, Bello, Crawford, Giolito, and ? (Current pro projected rotation for next year with no additions)

The Red Sox are currently 16th in WHIP and 17th in ERA this year. That is not World Series caliber pitching. And they are set to lose Jansen, Martin and Pivetta with Giolito and Whitlock returning from injury and none of their highly rated prospects being pitchers. 

They need pitching help.  All kinds. They need righthand hitting. They need to make sure their middle infield defense is better even if Story gets hurt again. They need to make sure they have the depth to withstand the inevitable injuries. The big 4 prospects might provide some of that depth. But they aren't going to provide the pitching help that is needed unless you trade one or more for pitching. It is either that or free agents.

Stats to ponder: 1985 Boston Red Sox Statistics ; Record: 81-81-1, Finished 5th in AL_East

Literally you, higher on that page. Lol.