Red Sox keep tabs on Yankees, Mets free agents as winter approaches

The Boston Red Sox need some serious upgrades for the 2023 season, and they reportedly have their eyes on some star free agents.

The Boston Red Sox need some serious upgrades for the 2023 season after essentially scraping rock bottom through all of 2022. According to Mike Rosenstein of NJ.com, the Red Sox have their eyes on some New York Yankees and New York Mets star free agents.

Players Boston is eyeing include Jameson Taillon, Matt Carpenter, Chris Bassitt, Brandon Nimmo, Edwin Diaz, Aaron Judge and Jacob deGrom.

Boston has a lot of money, so signing some big names shouldn’t be much of an issue. It just comes down to how much they’re willing to spend. They’ve proven of late they don’t like to dish out money where it’s due, so only time will tell if they drop a large amount on a free agent or if they extend their homegrown talent.

Regardless, the roster needs a lot of reconstruction and the bullpen should be the team’s top priority.

Red Sox should focus on fixing their bullpen before anything else

Overall, the team needs work. They finished last in the division as the only team below .500. However, their lineup wasn’t nearly as bad as it may have seemed. In fact, that’s just about the only thing they had going for them.

Among all teams in the regular season, Boston had the third-best batting average (.258), sixth-best on-base percentage (.321) and ninth-best slugging percentage (.409) and OPS (.731). They could stand to get more power in the lineup, but all around, it’s above league average.

Their pitching on the other hand was a complete train wreck. Their starters weren’t horrible, but they could’ve been better. Nick Pivetta was one of the most solid over the season, as well as Michael Wacha and Nathan Eovaldi. Compared to the league, they weren’t the greatest but they got the job done more often than not. However, nearly every time a reliever was sent in, there’d be a meltdown leading to several relievers rotating in.

Among the league, Boston had the sixth-worst ERA (4.53), opponent batting average (.256) and WHIP (1.35). Though there are several areas of concern with the team, the rotation and bullpen seem to be one of the root causes of failure.