Fox: It's a good time to be a Red Sox fan
In the middle of a surprising pennant chase and stocked with an overload of young talent, it's clear something special is brewing in Boston
With this being my first article with Beyond the Monster, I feel that I need to clarify that I am not a blindly optimistic Red Sox fan. I am not going to sit here and tell you that everything is always perfect. I am not even telling you that the Red Sox are going to make the playoffs. Yet with all the chaos and the negativity that has been draped over this team for the last few seasons, it’s worth taking a second to appreciate what the Red Sox have built for 2024 and beyond.
The 2024 Red Sox, after all, were not even supposed to get this far. Most pundits predicted that the Red Sox would have been a .500 team at best, a number that only dropped once Lucas Giolito, Trevor Story, Garrett Whitlock and Triston Casas went down in April. But after stumbling to a 32-33 record by the beginning of June, a mediocre and short-handed Red Sox team transformed into something else entirely. They became fun, exciting, and, most importantly, good. In the last 30 games before the All-Star Break, the Red Sox ripped off 21 wins, catapulting them right back into the Wild Card race and forcing people to finally take them seriously.
Like many great Red Sox teams in the past, this squad is built around a relentless offense. Even without Story and Casas, the Red Sox currently lead the majors in OPS and are top five in most offensive categories. Yes, Tyler O’Neill and Rafael Devers have been two of the top power hitters in baseball, but what is arguably even more impressive is how deep the lineup is. With the emergence of Connor Wong as one of the top hitting catchers in baseball and Ceddanne Rafaela providing a major thump in the nine hole, there is truly no place for an opposing pitcher to breathe when they face this starting nine.
What makes this Red Sox offense even more unique, however, is the added element of speed. Sure, the Red Sox have had premier base stealers like Mookie Betts and Jacoby Ellsbury in the past, but even in the years of the killer B’s, they have never had a team that was this athletic. In Rafaela, Jarren Duran, and David Hamilton, the Red Sox already have three players with over 16 stolen bases. That feat was last accomplished by the 2013 and 2018 squads which, in case you forgot, turned out to be pretty decent. With 108 stolen bases already, this year’s team is poised to blow past the 126 mark set by the 2009 squad for the most steals by a Red Sox team this century, proving that this is an offense that can beat you in every possible way.
One could even argue, in fact, that the Red Sox offense’s biggest obstacle is their own pitching staff. After a historic and shocking start, the Red Sox pitching staff, as pointed out by @itsbrianbarrett on X (formerly Twitter), has completely fallen back to earth:
With all the talk of Andrew Bailey and the new pitching infrastructure, a lot of the pitchers’ numbers look pretty similar last season. The only pitcher who has unequivocally made a jump has been Tanner Houck, and his numbers in July rival some of the worst of any month of his career.
At a certain point, regression to the mean comes for everybody. The starting rotation is made up of talented but flawed pitchers who have never been more than number three starters in the big leagues. It was not realistic that they could sustain the production they had in April, and the warmer weather combined with the mileage of a unprecedented workload, has sent them crashing back to earth. It’s hard to see how they can right the ship, and it’s even harder to see how the Red Sox can make a run in October without a single trusted starting pitcher.
So despite having a top-of-the-line lineup and bullpen, the 2024 Red Sox will not be winning the World Series. But that’s not really the point, is it? We expected this season to be another trying, boring, slog of a campaign as another step of a never-ending rebuild. Instead, this Red Sox team has not only exceeded expectations as a collective unit but has showcased breakout individual performances of players who now look to be part of the next great Red Sox team.
Duran proved last year he is a legitimate big-league player, but no one could have predicted he would become an eight-win, all-around superstar. Rafaela fought through early rookie learning curves to post a league-average OPS with exceptional defensive versatility. Wilyer Abreu has built upon a strong cup of coffee from last September to establish himself as a righty-masher who plays an elite right fielder. Behind the plate, Wong has improved his 2023 OPS by over 120 points and become a much-needed, consistent right-handed bat. And despite recent struggles, Kutter Crawford and Houck have proven that they are long-term rotation pieces, even if it’s likely as a 3 or a 4 rather than a 1 or a 2.
The really good problem the Red Sox now have is that all these breakouts are going to force them to make some tough decisions, because there is even more help on the way. The Red Sox farm system continues to take steps forward, headlined by the “Big 3” of Marcelo Mayer, Kyle Teel and Roman Anthony. Each top prospect has posted an OPS above .800 in Double-A Portland, and are looking like safe bets to join the Red Sox at some point in 2025.
This is far from a three-man show, however, as Kristian Campbell has exploded onto the scene and on top 100 lists across the country by hitting .376 in Portland with nearly as many walks as strikeouts. And as if this wasn’t all enough, the Red Sox caught a break when college standout Braden Montgomery fell in their laps at number 12. The slugging outfielder, who hit 27 home runs in just 61 games this year at Texas A&M, should be another fast mover.
Simply put, with the exception of the Orioles, there is no other organization in baseball with as much offensive talent in the system as the Red Sox. And while it’s true that the pitching development has fallen behind (though there have been some strides made by prospects like Luis Perales, David Sandlin, Elmer Rodriguez-Cruz, and Yordanny Monegro), the Red Sox have plenty of offensive depth to dip into to address any shortcomings on the mound. After all, there are not enough spots for all the position players, and trades like the Nick Yorke-Quinn Priester swap we saw at the trade deadline could become the norm to even out the talent disparity between hitters and pitchers in the system.
The question of who to move and who should stay, however, is an offseason question. The Red Sox are in the middle of a playoff push, and with Triston Casas, Liam Hendriks, and possibly Story on their way back, there is no reason why they can’t pass a flawed Royals team to claim the last Wild Card spot. And even if they somehow don’t find their way into October, it’s clear that this is an organization on the upswing, and with Alex Cora and Craig Breslow leading the way and young talent breaking out all over the diamond, there is a lot for Red Sox fans to feel good about.