Coming out of the 2024 season, the needs for the Red Sox are pretty clear. They need a righthanded bat with some pop—preferably a lot of pop. It is Fenway Park, after all. They need to reconfigure and bolster their relief corps, with Chris Martin and Kenley Jansen likely leaving in free agency. And, more than all of that, they need a bona fide starting pitcher.
Maybe two.
Organizational history suggests that the Red Sox will not invest big money in long-term pitching contracts, though, which means that, though bringing in Corbin Burnes from the Orioles sounds like an ideal plan, it just does not fit with what we know about how this team operates.
Instead, it’s more likely that former MLB GM Jim Bowden has it right in his latest column for The Athletic, “2024-25 MLB offseason: Bowden’s 25 predictions for signings, trades and more,” which has the Red Sox landing two mid-rotation arms with some upside.
No. 12 on Bowden’s list: “The Red Sox sign righty Jack Flaherty to a three-year, $68 million deal and lefty Yusei Kikuchi to a three-year, $42 million deal.”
Red Sox Could Go Quantity Over Quality
Neither Flaherty nor Kikuchi is a sure-bet ace, but both have the potential to handle the role. Flaherty is 29 and coming off his best season, going 13-7 with a 2.95 ERA and 133 strikeouts in 106.1 innings after starting with the Tigers and being traded to the Dodgers. He was not great in the playoffs overall, but he won two key games that set up L.A.’s championship run, the openers of both the NLCS and World Series.
Kikuchi is 33 and has been a middling starter for six MLB season, but excelled down the stretch for the Astros after he was acquired from Toronto at the trade deadline. He was 9-10 with a 4.05 ERA overall, but went 5-1 with a 2.70 ERA and a WHIP of 0.933 in 10 starts down the stretch for Houston.
The Red Sox also made the surprising decision to extend a qualifying offer to Nick Pivetta, which could keep him in the fold, too. Pivetta went 6-12 with a 4.14 ERA last year.
Pitching Is the Priority
Adding Flaherty and Kikuchi, plus getting Lucas Giolito back after he missed the entire season with an elbow injury, and keeping Pivetta, would give the Red Sox seven front-line starters: Flaherty, Kikuchi, Giolito, Pivetta, Tanner Houck, Bryan Bello and Kutter Crawford.
Houck made huge strides in 2024 and could land in the ace spot in 2025, though he might not quite be ready for that. The Red Sox also figure to get Garrett Whitlock back early in the season after he recovers from elbow surgery, though he is likely to move back to the bullpen.
Chief baseball officer Craig Breslow told reporters this week that giving the $21 million qualifying offer to Pivetta shows how much the team values pitching right now.
“Without getting too far into specifics, we’ve been pretty outspoken about our need for pitching, And obviously we know Nick really well,” Breslow told reporters, per MLB.com. “This is ultimately where we landed. We’ll see how things play out from here.”
