The Boston Red Sox are a perfectly average team. Their 75-75 record places them exactly where they have been all season. Through highs and lows, they’ve always managed to find their way back to .500.
The underwhelming season was of their own making. The Red Sox were better than they thought they would be, which kept them from becoming as good as they could have been. Boston abandoned their current roster to invest in their future before the season even began.
Yet, the Red Sox managed to string together enough wins to climb 10 games above .500 before the All-Star break. Then, everything fell apart. Boston fell out of Wild Card contention as they put together an abysmal 22-33 record in the second half, third-worst in the majors. While the Red Sox still haven’t been mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, it’s evident that it’s time to start looking ahead.
Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow recently reflected on the season and hinted at a more aggressive approach during the upcoming offseason, according to Alex Speier of The Boston Globe.
“When you have homegrown, cost-controlled talent, it enables you to be a little bit more aggressive in looking for elite major league talent,” Breslow said.
It remains to be seen how aggressive Breslow and the Red Sox are, particularly with so many promising prospects that are continuing to develop. Boston’s farm system features four of the top 25 prospects in baseball — Roman Anthony, Marcelo Mayer, Kristian Campbell and Kyle Teel — who are all in Triple A. The Red Sox also has several young big league players, such as Jarren Duran, Wilyer Abreu, Ceddanne Rafaela, Tanner Houck and Justin Slaten.
“The state of the build is strong,” Breslow said. “The position players that we thought had the potential to impact our major league team this year and in the near future are doing that, or have increased or confirmed our confidence in their ability to do that. Obviously, our system is still unbalanced toward position players. I think the building blocks are there. We’ve got to continue to push on developing pitching.”
When asked if he regrets not pouring more resources into the 2024 roster, Breslow carefully sidestepped the question.
“It’s a fair question, but you’d have to zoom out and look at the decisions in totality,” Breslow said. “If it turns out that we end up a couple of games short of making the postseason, I will be questioning not just the resources we poured into 2024 or didn’t pour into 2024 in spring training, but also every decision that we made over the course of the season … because the overarching goal here is to make the playoffs and give yourself a chance to compete for a World Series championship. Anytime you don’t, there’s a ton of disappointment. And anytime you don’t, you have to question all of the decisions you made. But we make the best decisions that we can with the information that we have available to us at that time. It becomes often a different calculus in retrospect.”
The Red Sox have developed a conservative approach in recent years, and disappointment during the offseason wouldn’t necessarily come as a surprise to Boston fans. Still, Breslow is peddling hope for those who will buy it.
“I think we should feel pretty optimistic and pretty excited about what the future looks like,” Breslow said.
Only time will tell how much faith the Red Sox have in their roster to compete for a World Series next season.
