Red Sox’ Craig Breslow on additions to the rotation: ‘I don’t think anything is off the table’
Red Sox’ Craig Breslow on additions to the rotation: ‘I don’t think anything is off the table’
Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow met with the media in San Antonio for the GM Meetings to discuss extending the $21.05 million qualifying offer to Nick Pivetta.
Breslow placing the QO on Pivetta shocked media and fans alike, who thought the Canadian hurler was a slam dunk to reach free agency. He is still eligible to talk to other teams and sign with a club other than the Red Sox. Pivetta will have until 4 p.m. on Nov. 19 to accept or decline it.
“We’ve been pretty outspoken about our need for pitching,” chief baseball officer Craig Breslow said at the GM Meetings. "Obviously, we know Nick really well. This is ultimately where we landed. We’ll see how it plays out from here.”
The likelihood Pivetta accepts the QO seems high, and if he does accept, he will rejoin the Red Sox rotation with Tanner Houck, Kutter Crawford, Brayan Bello, and returning injured starter Lucas Giolito. Even with those players, the Red Sox are not set in their rotation and expect to pursue the trade market and free agency.
“I don’t think anything is off the table,” Breslow said. “I think we’ll still continue to explore how we’ll improve the rotation and how we’ll improve the pitching staff.”
It’s without saying that the Red Sox, or any team for that matter, can never have enough starting pitching to get through the full grind of an MLB season. When Pivetta is dialed in on the mound, he can be dominant, but when he’s inconsistent, he shows his warts as a starter.
“I think we definitely saw stretches of him just being dominant, and, certainly, we can dissect the performance to a greater degree,” said Breslow on Monday. “But he’s a guy that has performed well in this market—has all of the underlying metrics. He gets a ton of swing-and-miss; he doesn’t walk, guys. He can get guys out pitching in the strike zone.
“As you think about what a Major League starting pitcher needs to be able to do to be successful, he has a lot of those ingredients.”
On Monday, The Athletic projected a three-year, $48 million deal for Pivetta this winter; he’ll spend the next two weeks seeing if the interest from other teams is great enough for him to reject Boston’s offer and seek a multi-year deal elsewhere.
The Red Sox and Pivetta could also come together on a new contract that would extend his tenure with the club that dates back to August 2020, when Chaim Bloom acquired him from the Phillies in a four-player deal.
