If you are following this offseason even remotely by now, you probably have noticed that there's a lot of talk about what will the Red Sox do, even prior to the Yankees acquiring Stanton and that obviously just helped increase it, they need a big bat, they need power, it's all you hear around Boston, well i am here to tell you, no they don't, the Red Sox like any team could benefit from some improvement, but in the overall landscape of the league, the Red Sox are fine, here's why.
In 2017 Boston won 93 games, the AL East and a trip to face the to be World Series champions Houston Astros, in a season they were basically carried by their pitching staff who finished the year with the second best ERA+ in the American League behind the historically great Cleveland Indians, interestingly enough if you look at their staff, it doesn't look like much, Sale was great, but struggled in the 2nd half, Pomeranz was pretty good, Kimbrel had a historic season, beyond that is just a lot of meh, Price pitched 74 innings, Porcello stunk, Rodriguez was solid but incosistent and Kelly was pretty good, the good news for Boston is no one really overachieved, there's no big candidate to come down to earth, you expect Sale to be a 6 WAR player, Pomeranz will probably regress a bit, just nothing really impactful and Kimbrel should regress and have like a 2 win season, but you just can't expect what he did this year on a consistebt basis, is unrealistic, Kelly maybe slighty overachieved but that's pretty minor and that's it, Porcello can't possibly be any worse, a full season out of Price could surely help, people may have forgotten this, but he is still a good player. The point is, the area of strength for them this past year wasn't an area of big overachievement, which means they should be fine for next season
Now on to the hitting side, this is where the Boston fans have a lot to look forward to, this past year the Red Sox finished the season ranked
15th in WAR at 17.8
22nd in WAR at 92 behind the WHITE SOX
28th in ISO at .149
20th in wOBA at .316
This is the same team who led baseball in wRC+ the year before by a wide margin, 114 to 107, regardless of what one may tell you, David Ortiz is not the difference between a team wRC+ of 114 to 92, part of that is affected by him, just part of that.
Below is a list of Red Sox hitters and their wOBA and wRC+ in 2016, 2017 and their Steamer projections for the 2018 season.
Mookie Betts
2016: .379 137
2017: .339 108
2018: .374 132
Jackie Bradley Jr.
2016: .354 119
2017: .313 90
2018: .335 105
Xander Bogaerts
2016: .348 115
2017: .321 96
2018: .341 109
Dustin Pedroia
2016: .358 122
2017: .331 102
2018: .336 105
Hanley Ramirez
2016: .367 128
2017: .318 93
2018: .346 112
Chris Young
2016: .364 126
2017: .310 88
2018: Chris is a free agent
Andrew Benintendi
2016: .357 122
2017: .332 103
2018: .352 117
Note: Obviously Andrew didn't play much in 2016, only 34 games to be exactly, i just wanted to state that the expectations for him were more in line with what he did in 16, than his production this year, he couldn't hit lefties, maybe he can, maybe not, i don't know, and his numbers against righties were merely good.
That is amazing, the decrease in production from one year to another is like everyone decided to have an off year all in the same season, and most of these guys are young, on top of that you get a full year out of Rafael Devers instead of running Pablo Sandoval and Deven Marrero out there.
All of this is to prove that the Red Sox had significantly more underachievers than overachievers and still won 93 games, sure they could use an improvement at first base/designated hitter, but it's not worth paying 100+ for Hosmer nor JD, sign a right handed platoon bat for the outfield, preferably one that can play CF, Maybin, Jackson, Gomez even Young all tho i wouldn't push that, if you can get him on a 1 year affordable contract give Bautista some at bats at DH, give Sam Travis a chance and if his market plummets maybe pursue Lucroy, a good player to go after is Neil Walker at like 21/2 he can handle 2B until Pedroia is fully healthy, can spell Devers at 3B once in a while and could get some at bats later in the year as the DH, since 2011 he has had 2 WAR or more seasons in every year, those are the kind of opportunities i'd seek, on top of that you could probably go after one or two relief pitchers on the cheap and maybe another starte as insurance.
My point is the Red Sox are fine, there's a good chance that the Yankees win the AL East next year, but overpaying for a DH won't really change that and it will definetely jeopardyze your future, you have an ace, solid starters behind him, a stud closer, some nice relief options and a bunch of young, cheap very good position players, part of your problem now is that the front office a few years ago decided to add two big bats in Pablo Sandoval and Hanley Ramirez how well did that work out, how about when you signed than quickly got rid of Gonzalez and Crawford, history is telling you that this is a loussy idea, just listen to it.
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See you tomorrow
