At the end of the day, the Boston Red Sox managed to put together one of the best offseasons in baseball ahead of the 2025 season.
It was looking a little dicey there for a second as Alex Bregman lingered in free agency for way too long, making it seem like the Sox weren't going to get the right power bat they needed, but Bregman eventually came through for them in the end.
All told, the Sox added 10 new players and lost six, and a few of the departed will be missed a lot more than others.
2 players from last year's Red Sox team that will be missed, and 2 who won't
Tyler O'Neill will be missed
The Red Sox chose not to extend O'Neill the qualifying offer (QO) last year, which made some sense seeing as he only managed to play in 113 games between dealing with a concussion, and then knee inflammation, and then a leg infection. He ended up signing a three-year, $49.5 million contract ($16.5 million AAV) with the division rival Orioles in December, so the Sox were right not to give him $21.05 million for one year.
However, it'll be hard not to miss him when, even in an injury-shortened season, he posted a .847 OPS and hit 16 homers at Fenway, almost all of them clearly over the Green Monster. If he'd been able to stay healthy, it would've been a great bounce-back year after coming off of a career-worst year with the Cardinals in 2023, and the Red Sox would've given him that QO without a second thought.
Kenley Jansen won't be missed
Jansen was able to do decent work with the Red Sox in his two-year stint, but he was still far from the peak he reached with the Dodgers in 2017. All told, he had a 3.44 ERA and 56 saves in Boston, which made him look like just the ghost of his former 1.32 ERA, 41-save self.
That kind of middling pitching combined with the fact that his departure from the team was ungraceful, to say the least, made him far from a fan favorite in Boston. He seemed to have a foot out the door through the second half of the season, and he finally bucked up and just left in the last few weeks. He signed a one-year deal with the Angels for 2025, and you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone who will really miss him in Boston.
Chris Martin will be missed
Martin shook in the second season of his two-year deal with the Red Sox, pitching 44 1/3 innings for a 3.45 ERA while dealing with anxiety issues and elbow inflammation, which both landed him on the IL, but his 2023 season in Boston won't be easily forgotten. Even though he spent some time on the IL in April, he stayed healthy until the last few days of the season and pitched 55 1/3 innings for a 1.05 ERA, which was enough to earn him a few Cy Young votes.
He probably struggled a little too much in 2024 for the Red Sox to re-sign him in free agency, so he went to the Rangers on a one-year, $5.5 million deal. His bullpen replacement, Justin Wilson, is far from an improvement, and it's bound to make fans look back on Martin's 2023 even more fondly.
Nick Pivetta won't be missed
Pivetta lingered on the free agent market for a long time after turning down the QO from the Sox. It was a gamble from the team, who definitely would've been overpaying Pivetta if he'd accepted, that he'd overestimate his market and test free agency instead of coming back. Sure enough, he signed with the Padres on a four-year, $55 million deal just a few days before spring training games started, and the Red Sox got a draft pick.
While Pivetta will probably end up being a pretty reliable workhorse — he's pitched an average of around 156 innings over the last five seasons for a 4.33 ERA — the Sox did a lot in the way of improving the rotation with Garrett Crochet, Walker Buehler, and Patrick Sandoval (though there are still some question marks around the latter two). Pivetta also gave up 103 homers, half of them at Fenway, so it was time to let him walk.
