Boston Red Sox 2024 preview
The Boston Red Sox had one of the quietest offseasons in baseball, which is really saying something because the free agent market was pretty tame and a lot of teams were worried about their TV revenue deals, leading to less spending. The Red Sox are torn somewhere between trying to contend and trying to shed payroll in the deepest division in baseball. It is an unenviable spot to be, but also a self-inflicted one.
The pursuit of winning either calls for extreme spending or impeccable player development. The best have both. The Red Sox don’t really have either right now, as homegrown talents like Jarren Duran, Rafael Devers, and Triston Casas are playing premier roles, but most of the rest of the roster has been acquired via trade or minor free agent deals.
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Hope, however, is on the horizon. Prospects Ceddanne Rafaela, Marcelo Mayer, Roman Anthony, and Miguel Bleis are on the way with various timelines. Unfortunately, none of those guys pitch and the Red Sox will head into the season with a lot of low-ceiling arms in the clubhouse.
Flirting with .500 isn’t good enough for this fan base or the deep pockets of owner John Henry, but that appears to be the most likely outcome based on the preseason betting odds.
2024 Boston Red Sox Odds
(odds from DraftKings as of Feb. 29)
World Series: +5000
AL Pennant: +2200
AL East: +1300
Win Total: 79.5 (+100/-120)
Make Playoffs: Yes +260 / No -310
Boston Red Sox Preview: Offense
Putting Boston’s offensive numbers in the proper context is important. The Red Sox were sixth in batting average, 13th in OBP, and ninth in SLG, but they were a below average offense by wRC+ at 99. A score of 100 is a league average offense when adjusting for park factors and the overall league run environment.
To illustrate this point, let’s look at Boston’s home performance for and against relative to the overall league average.
League home offense: .252/.324/.422
Boston home offense: .279/.344/.453
Visiting offense at Fenway: .265/.337/.440
Using Three-Year Statcast Park Factors, Fenway Park was the No. 2 park in baseball, trailing only Coors Field, for obvious reasons. Fenway is the best doubles park in baseball and second to Coors Field for hits. So, yes, more often than not, the Red Sox offense is going to thrive at home, but the other team’s offense is going to perform at a really high level as well.
Take Boston’s offensive numbers with a grain of salt. The park really helps. That’s why the park-adjusted metric like wRC+ is a better barometer. After all, they batted .238/.304/.396 on the road, despite hitting two more homers on the road compared to at home.
All of that said, I do like this position player group. I don’t expect Duran to ride a .381 batting average on balls in play this season to a .295/.346/.482 slash, as a .482 SLG with eight homers in 362 plate appearances seems wildly unsustainable. But, he has good speed and had really high contact quality.
I would also expect better from Devers, who actually had a higher Hard Hit% and a higher Barrel% in 2023 than he had in 2022, but he fell on the unlucky side with a 24-point drop in batting average. He hit six more homers, but he didn’t get rewarded as often for the quality of his contact. With some gains there and a strong follow-up season for Casas, who hit 24 homers and walked nearly 14% of the time, the top of the order looks good.
I won’t even begin to know what Trevor Story will provide and I really worry about the splits for Masataka Yoshida with a 136 wRC+ in the first half and a 73 wRC+ in the second half during his first season stateside. Wilyer Abreu has hit at every level in the minors, but he does strike out a ton and it is always a concern when an organization like the Astros is willing to move a player. The same is true of Vaughn Grissom, who came over from the Braves in the Chris Sale trade. Grissom, too, has impressive minor league numbers, though they are all BABIP-based and that would worry me, too.
The Red Sox offense is never going to bottom out, but I’m less enthusiastic about the ceiling after doing a deep dive than I was with a surface-level look. That said, if Abreu and Grissom can translate their minor league success to the big leagues, the lineup is a lot deeper and a lot more dangerous.
Boston Red Sox Preview: Pitching
This is an enormous year for the Boston pitching staff and, frankly, the direction of the organization on that front. Lucas Giolito was the only free agent signing and Sale was shipped off to Atlanta. The Red Sox desperately need gains from Kutter Crawford and Tanner Houck, along with more consistency from Brayan Bello.
Let’s start with Bello, who had an eventful season in 2023. The Red Sox did open up some contract negotiations with him and he also had his first child around the All-Star Break. On the whole, the worm-killer had a 4.24 ERA with a 4.54 FIP, which really isn’t ideal for a guy with a 56.2% GB%. He didn’t miss enough bats and allowed 24 homers in 157 innings. He allowed a 44.3% Hard Hit%, which you can live with as a ground baller, but the Red Sox had the worst defensive infield by a very large margin per Statcast’s Outs Above Average metric.
Unless Bello’s high K% from the minors can translate, he’ll continue to be hurt by the bad defense and rate of balls in play in a no-shift world. It is entirely possible that between the kid and the workload, he ran out of gas late, as he allowed a .291 wOBA and had a 3.04 ERA in 80 innings before the Break before allowing a .377 wOBA and posting a 5.49 ERA in the second half. His ceiling seems lower than the Red Sox would have hoped, but he has the most upside as the youngster of the bunch.
Crawford has had issues staying healthy. He made 23 starts last season with a 4.04 ERA, 3.30 xERA, and a 3.83 FIP and a bit of a K% bump. I actually like him a lot with a 34.5% Hard Hit% and some positive regression signs. He was horrendous at home with a 6.00 ERA in 57 innings and great on the road with a 2.49 ERA over 72.1 innings, so that’s something to monitor, but he has some upside in my opinion.
I think Houck does as well, but he, too, hasn’t been a mainstay in the rotation. He worked a career-high 106 innings and had a career-worst 5.01 ERA, but he was primarily used as a reliever in 2022 and used exclusively as a starter in 2023. I like the GB% and I like his 12.9% SwStr%, so he’s missing bats and keeping the ball on the ground.
Both guys are pre-arbitration and will turn 28 early in the season, but they need to show more durability and live up to some of the underlying metrics. That’s especially true because I’m far from sold on a Giolito bounce back and even less sold on Nick Pivetta maintaining a 31.2% K% and covering up for his bad command with an 11.8% Barrel% and a 43.7% Hard Hit%.
(Author edit: A few days after posting, it was reported that Lucas Giolito had suffered a partially torn UCL and a flexor strain; Tommy John surgery is likely.)
As far as the bullpen is concerned, we could see Garrett Whitlock and Josh Winckowski get some starts or bulk appearances. The Red Sox used 17 different starting pitchers last season. High-leverage falls to Kenley Jansen and Chris Martin, who were both effective. Martin actually posted a 1.05 ERA with some stellar peripherals over 51.1 innings as the primary setup man. Jansen saw a nice velo bump to aid his cause.
Still, this was a bullpen in the bottom half of the league in ERA and FIP and brings back largely the same cast.
Boston Red Sox Player to Watch
DH Masataka Yoshida
The Red Sox invested $93 million in contract dollars for Yoshida, plus another $15 million and change in the posting fee from the Orix Buffaloes. He didn’t even make it the full season before getting relegated to the designated hitter role and getting figured out by MLB pitchers. Yoshida walked just 2.9% of the time in the second half and his K% went from 10.7% to 18.4%. The 30-year-old rookie was likely pressing, but poor contact quality and bad pitch selection may have also been byproducts of pitcher adjustments.
He slashed .326/.419/.538 in Japan with 427 walks against 307 strikeouts. Japanese pitchers and U.S. pitchers are not interchangeable, but he was a truly elite hitter in Asia. For the Red Sox to truly be dangerous this season, they have to out-hit their pitching staff and that means Yoshida as a big bat in the middle of the order.
Boston Red Sox Season Win Total Odds & Prediction
Mayer posted a 63 wRC+ at Double-A last season. Rafaela played 28 games at the MLB level and hit .241/.281/.386. Anthony is 19 and Bleis is 20. There are no top pitching prospects. What you see is what you get with the Red Sox this season. A Jordan Montgomery or even a Blake Snell would really improve the floor and ceiling for this ballclub, but, to this point, they have not signed either.
There are some positive reports out of Spring Training that Bello has a revamped slider, so that may up his projection, but I don’t see enough durability or promise in the rotation beyond him. As much as I want to believe in Houck and Crawford, I have to see it to believe it. If they were 120-inning guys on a team with more depth, I’d be a little more optimistic.
All of that said, this was a deeply-flawed roster last season and the Red Sox managed 78 wins. They don’t have a bunch of impending free agents to trade away if things are going south, so they won’t tank or have a big sell-off. I certainly lean Under here, especially with the strength of the division, but not enough for a bet.
Lean: Under 79.5
Get all of our preseason coverage in the 2024 MLB Betting Guide.
