Key Points
Bullet point summary by AI
- Despite a poor offensive start, the Boston Red Sox have built a defense and pitching staff that could carry them through the early season.
- Their bullpen leads the league in WHIP, and the rotation has shown resilience even with key injuries and underperformance from one starter.
- If the offense begins to click with key players returning, this team could transform into a legitimate playoff contender by midseason.
The Boston Red Sox do not have the underlying metrics of a winning team. But they do have several underlying features to believe that there could be underlying progress underlying a winning baseball team with underlying potential. In short, there’s a lot of underlying; I am lying under a tree as we speak.
There’s some depressing stuff out there about how if the Red Sox had a league-average offense, they’d have the best record in the MLB, but I choose to see that as a squarely half-full glass. With their elite run-saving defense, a scorching-hot, talented rotation that and downright elite bullpen, we have exactly one half of a winning baseball team. With the offense showing signs of life, perhaps this could be 62 percent of a winning baseball team by the end of May. Then the glass would be basically full; what kind of weirdo pours a glass of milk up to the brim?
The Red Sox have built an incredible defensive team. They just can't hit
The bullpen is the first and foremost advantage, a legitimately excellent unit that has yet to surrender a lead that made it out of the seventh inning. Their 1.16 WHIP is tops in the American League, with closer Aroldis Chapman on pace for what would be a career-high 39 saves after posting a personal-best 3.6 WAR last season. Middle reliever Jovani Morán has the same opposing expected batting average as Paul Skenes (in half as many innings pitched, ok just let me have this), and the rest of the pen has improved mightily at not giving up loud contact late in the game.
The starting rotation outside of Bryan Bello, who has been one of the worst pitchers in baseball, has been great even with true ace Garrett Crochet on the 15-day IL. Crochet is progressing toward a quick-ish return, and with Ranger Suarez, Sonny Gray, Payton Tolle and Connelly Early, that’s a legit five-man group. While Bello’s total collapse has been disappointing given the strides he made in 2025, the Red Sox don’t actually need him to be a regular starter in the Majors.
Then there’s the defense, which leads MLB by a lot in defensive runs saved, and probably has three (maybe four) Gold Gloves if the season ended right now: Cedanne Rafaela, Wilyer Abreu and Caleb Durbin are all the best at their respective positions in the American League or beyond, with Abreu leading the entire Majors in defensive runs saved regardless of position. Willson Contreras, meanwhile, has been an elite defensive first baseman.
So, as you can see, we have some stuff to work with right off the bat. As for the bat itself … listen, it hasn’t been great, okay. The Red Sox have MLB’s third-worst on-base percentage, second-worst OPS and worst slugging percentage. A squared plus B squared equals Cannot score runs. It’s bad, but it’s technically not as bad as it looks.
Caleb Durbin and Trevor Story have made Boston's hitting issues look worse than they are
Many of Boston’s offensive issues have been statistically exacerbated by trotting out two absolute black holes, Trevor Story and Caleb Durbin, for over 300 plate appearances, or 20 percent of their team total. Because of their defensive “necessity” (a strong word for Story, though Durbin is unironically the best defensive third-baseman in the American League) both were essentially everyday players before Story hit the IL. Story was striking out at Kyle Schwarber rates with none of the benefits, while Durbin is inarguably the worst hitter in baseball. Yes, it is inarguable; he is slashing .165/.247/.245 with an MLB-worst 38 wRC+. The fact that he has positive WAR with that slash line tells you how good a defender he is. But yes, he is inarguably the worst hitter in baseball. You cannot argue it.
The rest of the lineup, which has been missing their best on-paper hitter Roman Anthony for a huge chunk of the year, has not been good, but they haven’t been shockingly terrible like Story and Durbin. Contreras and Abreu appear to have ridden Venezuela’s World Baseball Classic win wave straight into the regular season — both are raking. Meanwhile, Jarren Duran has five home runs in May after hitting just one in March and April. If Anthony can return sometime soon (crosses fingers) that’s an actual lineup you can build something around.
There is one thing to deal with: while I would not necessarily be shocked if Story has played his last game for the Red Sox already, Durbin kinda … has to play every day for his defense, a situation we can take in one of two directions. First, we could say that Durbin’s hitting simply cannot get any worse, which I reject since, in sports, it can always get worse. Second, we could think to the future, one when Marcelo Mayer has learned how to play third base and top-10 prospect in baseball Franklin Arias can take over at shortstop, and smile. We can always smile.
While there is still much to do, this Red Sox team is not dead in the water, as they looked for much of April. Something smells like a good baseball team in here, we just have to find it.
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