TAMPA — This spring there is a palpable buzz coming out of Red Sox camp in Fort Myers that can be heard all the way up the gulf coast to Steinbrenner U. where the Yankees are now anticipating their biggest challenge to American League East supremacy coming from an old familiar foe about to rise out of dormancy.
You have to say no team had a better, more productive offseason than the Red Sox, who bolstered their starting rotation with the trade for the much-coveted lefty Garrett Crochet from the White Sox, landed the second biggest bat on the free agent market in Alex Bregman, and are boasting three of the most highly touted rookies in all of baseball in second baseman Kristian Campbell, shortstop Marcelo Mayer and outfielder Roman Anthony. Dare we say the rivalry is back?
Even Aaron Boone, when asked about the Red Sox in a media scrum last week, conceded the signing of Bregman makes them “a really formidable team” while adding he’d “prefer them in that .500 area.” That surely has been where the Red Sox have been these last three years — actually worse, .500 last season and a last place team in 2022-2023 — at the same time their owner John Henry slashed payroll and seemingly cut off the free agent financial hose. But something happened this winter. Perhaps Henry got tired of the Red Sox being irrelevant. In any case, he gave the go-ahead to engage in the Juan Soto sweepstakes and reportedly was right there at the end with the Yankees and Blue Jays over the $700 million plateau.
At the same time, the Red Sox moved boldly to address their major Achilles heel these past few years — their starting pitching — by being the most aggressive suitor for Crochet and winning the sweepstakes with a package of four prime prospects from their greatly improved farm system, headed by slugging catcher Kyle Teel, and then signed one-time top-of-the-rotation Dodger righty Walker Buehler for $21.05 million, based mostly on his standout pitching in the postseason last year after he’d spent much of ’24 rehabbing from Tommy John surgery.
While the signing of Bregman for a opt-out laden three-year, $120 million deal adds a potent right-handed bat for Fenway Park, it has created the one spring training controversy for the Red Sox in that Rafael Devers, who led the AL in (mostly throwing) errors each of the past three seasons, is resisting moving off third base to become the designated hitter. For the time being Bregman has been playing second in spring games, but ideally the Red Sox would like to turn second over to the rookie Campbell, a fourth round draft pick out of Georgia Tech in 2023 who slashed .330/.439/.558 through three levels of their minor league system in ’24.
A scout with close ties to Red Sox manager Alex Cora told me that, in the end, defense will be the deciding factor. “I know that the most important thing to Alex is defense and his best defensive alignment is Bregman at third and the kid at second,” the scout said.
And speaking of Cora, a lot of the Red Sox’s aggressiveness this offseason is a direct result of his contract extension negotiation last July. Cora was in the final year of his contract and had made it clear he was not happy with the direction the Red Sox had been going, and conceivably he was going to be a hot commodity on the managerial free agent market. But as Red Sox president Sam Kennedy said: “Most importantly he really just wanted to ensure we were going to be to be committed to winning. We’ve obviously scuffled in years but we’ve always had that commitment and burning desire and we shared that with A.C.”
What’s most interesting in this looming Red Sox renaissance is the emergence of home grown talent. Besides Devers, first baseman Triston Casas, outfielders Ceddanne Rafaela and Jarren Duran are all home grown while Campbell, Mayer and Anthony were all high draft picks by former GM Chaim Bloom — as was Teal, the key piece in the Crochet deal. It’s still unclear why Bloom was fired. When he was hired in 2020 to replace Dave Dombrowski, it was viewed as a major shift by Red Sox ownership to analytics. Bloom was tasked with rebuilding the Red Sox farm system — but not before he was ordered to trade Mookie Betts to the Dodgers because ownership did not have the appetite for the kind of 12-year, $365 million commitment it was going to take to keep him out of free agency. The only return left for the Red Sox in that trade is starting catcher Connor Wong.
In addition, Wilyer Abreu, who won a Gold Glove in right field as a rookie for the Red Sox last year, was acquired by Bloom in a 2022 deadline trade with Houston for fading catcher Christian Vazquez. Indeed, if, as it seems, the Red Sox are on the verge of re-emerging as perennial contenders and the Yankees’ biggest nemesis, Red Sox ownership will grudgingly have to agree most of the credit for that goes to Chaim Bloom.
IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD
Can we all agree Jasson Dominguez can’t play left field? … Alas the White Sox are picking up this spring where they left off last year as the worst team in the history of baseball. Besides losing six of their first seven Cactus League games, the White Sox ranked 30th in batting average, on-base percentage and slugging and, adding injury to insult, lost their top hitter and highest paid player Andrew Benintendi for an extended period into the regular season when he was hit by a pitch and suffered a non-displaced fracture of his right hand. … According to the Associated Press, the Dodgers will owe $1.051 billion in deferred payments to eight players from 2028-46. While commissioner Rob Manfred said they did everything within the rules this winter it doesn’t change the fact that that number is just plain hideous.
