Nobody seems to understand that the Red Sox hold the tiebreaker over the Rangers, and so a Rangers loss today would clinch a playoff spot for the Red Sox

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Yesterday NESN put up a graphic in the bottom of the first inning that gave two clinching scenarios for the Red Sox:

Red Sox win and Blue Jays win,

OR

Red Sox win, Rangers win, Astros lose.

This was incorrect. With a Red Sox win yesterday, nothing else was required. Not a Blue Jays win. Not an Astros loss. Just a Red Sox win by itself would have gotten the job done.

I saw the same mistake being made in social media from some pretty influential sources.

After thinking about it, I realized that they must not be accounting for the fact that the Red Sox hold the tiebreaker over the Texas Rangers, meaning that if the Red Sox and Rangers end up with the same record, and tied for a wild card spot, that the wild card spot would go to the Red Sox. And I wondered if they realized that the Red Sox hold the tiebreaker at all. So I will explain that all here.

First, we must realize that for the Red Sox to fail to make the playoffs, two teams must pass them in the wild card standings. Currently, there are only 4 teams that can surpass or tie the Red Sox in the standings; those are the White Sox and Guardians from the Central division, and the Astros and Rangers from the West division. But it’s not enough for, say, one team from each division to pass the Red Sox, because if only one team passed them, that team would end up being the division winner, and the remaining team ends up trailing the Red Sox in the wild card race.

That means that to knock the Red Sox out, all four teams would have to pass the Red Sox in the standings, or tie them and hold the tiebreaker.

And that means that if the Red Sox clinch over any one of those four teams, they’re in the playoffs. (There is a weird exception in which the Red Sox tie both the Guardians and White Sox, and don’t make the playoffs despite having the tiebreaker over the White Sox, but I don’t want to overcomplicate this discussion with that point right now.)

The Red Sox hold the tiebreakers over the White Sox and the Rangers right now. The Astros hold the tiebreaker over the Red Sox. For the Guardians, the tiebreaker with the Red Sox will be determined by the winner of their upcoming 3-game series.

To get the Red Sox magic number over the Astros, we have to recognize that the Red Sox must finish with a better record than the Astros, because the Astros hold the tiebreaker. That can be assured by the Red Sox win total added to the Astros loss total being a number that is at least 163. Because if it’s just 162, the Astros still have a chance of tying, and taking the wild card spot. So the formula we use is

(Magic number over Astros) = 163 – (Red Sox wins) – (Astros losses)

That number is currently 1. That’s why a Red Sox win or an Astros loss today gets the Sox in the playoffs, as many are saying today.

To get the Red Sox magic number over the White Sox and Rangers, it’s good enough for the Red Sox to clinch a tie, because the Red Sox hold the tiebreaker over both teams. So those formulas are

(Magic number over White Sox) = 162 – (Red Sox wins) – (White Sox losses)

(Magic number over Rangers) = 162 – (Red Sox wins) – (Rangers losses)

The difference being, we subtracted from 162 for teams over which we hold the tiebreaker, and from 163 for teams over which we do not.

Using this formula, the Red Sox magic number over the Rangers is currently 1. So a Rangers loss today, by itself, clinches a playoff spot for the Red Sox. But nobody is saying that.

There are only two possible explanations for this error. One is that people are using the first formula in all cases, even when the leading team (the Red Sox) holds the tiebreaker. The other explanation is that they just don’t realize that the Red Sox hold the tiebreaker over the Rangers.

In case that’s what it is, let’s look at why the Red Sox hold the tiebreaker over the Rangers.

MLB’s current tiebreaker rules can be found here: MLB playoff tiebreaker rules

Here is how they describe their first tiebreaker for a tie between two teams:

1. Head-to-head record
The first and simplest tiebreaker is the result of the season series between the tied teams. If Team X and Team Y tie for the top spot in the division and Team X went 10-8 against Team Y, then Team X is the division champion.

The Red Sox and Rangers have completed their season series against each other, with a 3-3 record. This rule does not resolve the tie. So we must go to the second tiebreaker rule, which they describe as follows:

2. Intradivision Record
If the head-to-head record is also a tie, then the involved clubs’ records within their division will break the tie. This applies even if the tie is for a Wild Card spot between two teams that do not reside in the same division. The team with the superior intradivision record would win the tiebreaker.

The Rangers have completed all their games against West division opponents this year. Their final intradivision record is 23-29.

The Red Sox have one game to go against the East division, to be played today. Depending on how that goes, they’ll end up with either a 26-26 or a 25-27 intradivision record. Either one of those is better than the Rangers intradivision record, which means the Red Sox hold the tiebreaker over the Rangers.

So to summarize, the Red Sox clinch a playoff spot today if the Red Sox win, or the Astros lose, or the Rangers lose. No combinations of events required. And unlike what many are saying, a Rangers loss by itself does the job.

The winner of next week’s 3-game Red Sox/Guardians series wins their tiebreaker. Justifying that simple criterion is quite complex.

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Here is the list of tiebreakers that matter to the Boston Red Sox through the games of September 16, 2026. If these teams ended up tied for a wild card berth or a division title, the winner of the berth is the one that holds the tiebreaker.

As you can see, the Red Sox tiebreaker with the Guardians will go to whichever team wins their 3-game series next week (to be played September 22-24). It’s a simple criterion that has a very complex explanation. An explanation that I will now give to you!

So let’s assume the Red Sox and Guardians end up tied. That could happen, for example, if the Red Sox go 3-7 the rest of the way, and the Gaurdians go 7-2, putting both teams at 85-77 on the season. Or 2-8, 6-3, putting them both at 84-78.

The first tiebreaker rule is head-to-head record. So far this season, in their 3 games against each other, the Red Sox have won 2 and the Gaurdians 1. If the Red Sox win 2 or more of their 3 upcoming games, that assures they win more of their head-to-head games against the Guardians than the Guardians do, so they win the tiebreaker based on this first tiebreaking rule.

If the Gaurdians win all 3 upcoming games, they take the tiebreaker, with a 4-and-2 record head-to-head.

If, however, the Guardians take 2 of 3 in their upcoming series, they end up 3-3 against each other, and the first tiebreaker rule doesn’t resolve the tie. So we have to go to the second tiebreaker rule.

The second tiebreaker rule makes the winner the one with the better record against their own division. So far this season, the Red Sox are 24-25 in their division, with 3 to play against Tampa Bay. The Guardians are 27-22 in their division, with 3 to play against Kansas City. Given that, the only way this second tiebreaker doesn’t resolve in favor of the Guardians is if the Red Sox sweep their 3 games against Tampa Bay, and also the Guardians are swept in their 3 upcoming games against Kansas City. But that would mean the Red Sox went 4-2 in their games against Cleveland and Tampa Bay, and Cleveland went 2-4 in their games against Boston and KC. That’s too many Red Sox wins combined with Guardians losses (8) for the Red Sox and Guardians to end up tied in the first place. They can only end up tied if the combination of Red Sox wins and Guardians losses is 5. In other words, if the Red Sox and Guardians end the season tied, then either the Red Sox didn’t sweep Tampa Bay, or the Guardians were not swept by Kansas City, or both. Therefore, if this second tiebreaker does come into play, it will go in favor of the Guardians.

And that means, if the Guardians win 2 of 3 games in their upcoming series with the Red Sox, forcing the second tiebreaker rule to be used to decide any potential tie, the Guardians hold the tiebreaker.

So there you have it. If the Red Sox win 2 or more against the Guardians next week, the Red Sox hold the tiebreaker; if the Guardians win 2 or more against the Red Sox next week, the Guardians hold the tiebreaker. The tiebreaker goes to the winner of that series.

The winner of tonight’s Red Sox-Rangers game takes the season tiebreaker, and determining that is not simple

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Here is the list of tiebreakers that matter to the Boston Red Sox through the games of September 16, 2026. If these teams end up tied for a wild card berth or a division title, the winner of the berth is the one that holds the tiebreaker.

As you can see, the Red Sox tiebreaker with the Rangers in 2026 will be decided by the outcome of tonight’s game. Why? The explanation is not as simple as you might at first think.

If the Red Sox and Rangers end the season tied in the standings, the higher standing for the wild card is determined by their head-to-head record on the season. We call that the first tiebreaker. So far this season, the Red Sox have 2 wins and the Rangers 3 wins in their head-to-head matchups. So a Rangers win tonight gives them the tiebreaker.

If the Red Sox win tonight, however, each team ends up with 3 wins against each other, and the first tiebreaker no longer helps us, so then the second tiebreaker comes into play. This tiebreaker is based on record against your own division.

The Rangers have no more games to play against their own division this season, so they end their season with their current record of 23-29 within their division. The Red Sox are currently 24-25 against their division,with 3 games to play; the worst they could end up at is 24-28, which is better than the Rangers intra-division record. That gives the second tiebreaker to the Red Sox.

So there you have it. If the Red Sox win tonight, the first tiebreaker is a tie, and the second tiebreaker goes to the Red Sox. If the Rangers win, the first tiebreaker goes to them. So the winner of tonight’s game determines the tiebreaker between the Rangers and Red Sox.

When three active Red Sox rehab assignments must end, who will this force off the roster?

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When the rehab assignments of Red Sox players Trevor Story, Roman Anthony, and Isiah Kiner-Falefa end sometime over the next two weeks, who will this force off the roster?

TLDR: the top candidates for moving players off the Red Sox roster as rehabbing players return soon, IMO, are optioning Andruw Monasterio, and/or DFA’ing Isiah Kiner-Falefa and/or DFA’ing Eli White. But they may not need to do most of those.

This chart will help you figure it out.

Scenario in which no one is forced off

Some people think bringing up Roman Anthony and Trevor Story means two other players will need to be removed from the active roster. But it doesn’t. That’s because rosters expand by 2 this coming Tuesday, and all three rehab assignments will be allowed to go as long as the following Friday or later. When rosters expand, the Red Sox will be allowed to bring up either 1 pitcher and 1 position player, or 2 position players. So if they wait until Tuesday or later to bring those guys up, they don’t need to kick anyone off the roster to do it.

But then there will be the problem of Isiah Kiner-Falefa. They have to bring him up no later than September 8. If they don’t, they have to designate him for assignment, which would basically mean they’re releasing him. But that might not be such a bad way to go. He’s a free agent after this season, and the Red Sox are unlikely to try to get him back with the emergence of so many other good middle infield options on the team. They wouldn’t be planning to give him a qualifying offer either, given that it would be about 4 times what he made in 2026. So the loss would be just 4 weeks of IKF plus possibly his play in the playoffs. It wouldn’t be a huge sacrifice.

Scenarios in which one player is moved off

If they don’t want to release anybody, they could instead bring IKF onto the active roster while sending down an infielder who has minor league options. Mickey Gasper, Nick Sogard, Anthony Seigler, and Andruw Monasterio all have 2 minor league options remaining. Of those, Monasterio makes the most sense, as the other three have hot bats right now, while Monasterio’s went stone cold nearly 3 weeks ago. Plus his defense is inconsistent, unreliable. I like the guy a lot as a person, but sending Monasterio down makes the most sense.

Moving additional players off

Frankly I like the idea of bringing Romy Gonzalez up now to replace Monasterio. He’s been hitting well over his current 13-game AAA stint, with a .796 OPS, and .929 over his last 8 games. His defense is pretty reliable, and he’s always been basically an upgraded version of Monasterio at the plate. To bring him up, though, you need to kick someone additional off when IKF’s rehab is over.

Same thing if the Red Sox opt to bring up a pitcher when rosters expand. You have to do more than just option Monasterio.

That could be releasing IKF, as mentioned before. Or you could option one of the hot bats, like Seigler or Jarren Duran, the least hot bats among them. I don’t think they’d option Duran under any circumstances, though. Or you could DFA/release Jahmai Jones (no options) and his super hot bat, though they won’t. There is too much value in his bat as a pinch hitter and DH, and they can control him through 2030 if desired.

That leaves Eli White instead, whose bat has been nothing special. Actually quite poor. But he’s not on the team for his bat – he’s on it for exceptional outfield defense and elite running speed. The Red Sox as an organization were so historically and positively impacted by that stolen base Dave Roberts made in the 2004 ALCS, that they’ve kept their eyes out ever since for blazing fast pinch runners to bring up for the playoffs. Eli White is that guy, it seems.

But when Roman Anthony comes back, that pinch-running, late-innings-defense guy could be Jarren Duran. And when Trevor Story comes back, that guy could be Trevor Story – when he’s on the bench. And if one of those guys gets injured, they’ve got a very fast Nate Eaton in AAA as a backup plan. So Eli White just isn’t as important to this team once Anthony is back. As a mid-season pickup, they can’t make him a qualifying offer when he becomes a free agent this offseason, so there’s no prospect of picking up a draft pick by keeping him. He’s not likely to be re-signed by the Sox next season either, what with Rafaela, Anthony, Abreu, Duran, Yoshida, Jahmai Jones, and Kristian Campbell all due to return next year as potential outfielders.

Because White has no options left, the only way the Red Sox could remove him from the roster would be by DFAing/releasing him. But, as with IKF, the loss from DFAing/releasing Eli White in the coming week or so would be quite small, with such a small amount of time he’d be remaining on team.

So there you go – if they want to remove up to 3 guys to make room for returning players, my picks would be optioning Andruw Monasterio and DFAing Eli White and Isiah Kiner-Falefa.

And if they don’t need quite that many now, they may when Curtis Mead comes back just before the playoffs.

Sam Antonacci seemed to intentionally move into the path of the pitch that plunked him

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Sam Antonacci was not a name that I knew before last night. But the Chicago White Sox left fielder definitely got the notice and ire of Red Sox fans when, on the first pitch of the game, he grounded out to first base, and then hit Boston Red Sox first baseman Willson Contreras with an obviously intentional elbow as he ran by. When Contreras asked Antonacci if everything was okay between them, Antonacci just ignored him.

Then in the third inning, when Antonacci was up for the next time, a 93 mph Sonny Gray sinker plunked him on the thigh. Some speculated it was retaliation, but I don’t think the Red Sox would intentionally put him on base in an 0-2 count with a 1-run lead. However, it did look to me like Antonacci may have intentionally moved into the path of the baseball. So I paused the video and was able to see that, had Antonacci just stayed still, he probably wouldn’t have been hit. Certainly not had he done what most hitters do on a low and inside pitch, which is to scooch their feet backward. Instead, Antonacci pivoted on his front foot, so the back of his front leg faced the pitcher’s mound, but also moved closer to the plate. You can see it in these pictures:

In the left frame, the ball is approaching, and Antonacci has not yet begun his attempt to “get out of the way” of the pitch. The second frame is just before the ball strikes him. The third frame is the two images superimposed.

On this superimposed image you can see that his thigh was initially not in the path of the ball, but then moved forward until it was.

On the second frame, notice that even as he is turning away from the ball, he is keeping his eye on the ball. He would do that if he wanted to be precise about where the ball hits him.

So it seemed pretty obvious to me that Antonacci intentionally helped ensure the ball hit him, while disguising it as an attempt to get out of the way of the ball. Kind of the way he intentionally elbowed Contreras while disguising it as accidental contact. Perhaps with the elbow he was trying to set Contreras off, and get him another suspension? That part we can’t know.

But I did feel confident that if Antonacci is the kind of guy who pulls stunts like this, then we might be able to get some extra confirmation of that fact by observing that he has a high hit-by-pitch total. So I looked up the numbers.

Confirmed.

He was actually tied with Willson Contreras for second place on the MLB hit by pitch leaders list at the time of the elbow throw, and for first place in the American League. Perhaps the elbow was out of resentment for not being the outright leader in the stat? Probably not, but it’s fun to speculate surprising if unlikely reasons.

So now he’s in second place by himself, and he got there in relatively few plate appearances. I wonder if he has the highest rate of being hit by pitches? It turns out, for hitters with at least 100 PA, he does:

This can’t just be bad luck.

Could it be because of crowding the plate? Yes. Antonacci does appear to crowd the plate like Contreras does. But he also appears to have a talent for intentionally adding to his HBP totals on the right kind of low and inside pitch.

Some Red Sox succeed in Boston by shutting out the noise; this current roster succeeds by feeding off of it.

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To succeed as a baseball player in Boston, you have to have a way of dealing with the scrutiny of the fan base. This and what follows are things I think are true, but couldn’t prove to you. Consider it all well-considered opinion.

I think there are two personalities that can handle this well. I’ll call them the Cool Type and the Hot Type.

The Cool Type is calm, cool, and collected. Nothing fazes them. Criticism just slides right off like they don’t hear it. They succeed by shutting out the noise. On the Red Sox, this is Marcelo Mayer, Roman Anthony, Ranger Suarez, and maybe Masataka Yoshida.

The Hot Type is energetic and unapologetic. They hear the noise, and they feed off its energy, often even when the noise is critical of them. On the Red Sox, this is Willson Contreras, Wilyer Abreu, Peyton Tolle, and now Anthony Seigler too.

Other players who aren’t either type may succeed by following the lead of their Hot Type or Cool Type teammates.

All players will have some ability to shut out bad noise and feed off good noise. It’s just that some fit one archetype better than the other, and then that’s what everyone around them sees.

I think a team can succeed with a mixture of both types. Hot Types bring the energy when things are feeling lackluster. Cool Types provide the even keel when things are rough, the “everything’s going to be alright” mindset when worry sets in and potentially becomes self-defeating.

This year the Cool Types weren’t doing much. When Anthony Seigler showed up in June, I think the Hot Types reached a critical mass, and things took off. It helps that many players around them play with a lot of energy – Durbin, Duran, and now Cheng too. Rafaela plays with energy when it’s called for too, but the rest of the time seems to have that calm demeanor as well. Hard to place him.

Regardless, I think part of the magic of this run is that every position player on this current roster responds well to Hot Type leadership that Willson Contreras and others are providing. They’re feeding off all the energy around them, and no place provides more energy than a full Fenway Park when their Red Sox are on a winning streak and surging in the standings.

I don’t think Mayer and Anthony necessarily have an attitude problem, as some people are suggesting, just because they don’t fit the current clubhouse chemistry. They’re just a different type than what’s working so well for the Red Sox right now. Not saying the attitude problem isn’t there, either. It’s possible the whole “Big 3” thing went to their heads too much. But let’s not jump to that conclusion too hastily. For now, Hot is working for the Red Sox, but they may need to bring back some more Cool later on to get the best balance.

Update – The Red Sox Could Be an Unlucky .500 Team

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Two weeks ago I published How the Boston Red Sox could be an unlucky .500 team. It showed that if you randomly scramble up the Red Sox runs scored numbers from all their 2026 games, they would almost always end up with a few more wins than the 31 they actually had. Most typically, they’d be just under .500 for a winning percentage.

That article goes into detail about the thinking behind this analysis, and how it works.

It’s 2 weeks later now, and the Red Sox have done a bit more winning than losing in that time. I thought I’d check to see what their updated chart looks like. And here it is, through Friday’s opener against the Angels on July 3:

When randomly rearranging their scores, over 96% of the trials gave the Red Sox a better record than their current 38-48. The most likely outcome was an even .500 record of 43-43. 33.4% of trials were above .500, while 49.2% were below .500.

The Pythagorean Win-Loss formula also predicts a 43-43 record for the Red Sox.

So either the Red Sox have been unlucky this year, and are better than their record, or they’re just poor at winning close games.

How the Boston Red Sox could be an unlucky .500 team

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The Boston Red Sox offense has been up and down this year, but on the whole seems not bad. Their pitching has been very good this year. So has their defense.

So why do they have such a bad record of 31-43 (through the games of Saturday, June 21)?

I’ve noticed there are a lot of games where they come close, but fall just a little short. Sometimes the pitching is there, but the offense isn’t quite enough. Then the offense picks up, but at the same time the pitching falters. Could this be just a case of bad timing? Had they achieved the same game run totals, but just in different games, would the results be about the same, or better, or worse?

To be sure I’m conveying what I mean correctly, here’s an example. Suppose a team has played 3 games so far in a new baseball season. Their results are as follows:

Their record is 1-2. But it seems they’re playing better than their record – their losses are close, their win is not. They have more runs scored than allowed, overall.

What if the 6-run game had happened when their opponent scored 5 runs? They’d have won that game then. Swapping those first two scores earns them an extra win:

Well that’s interesting. The same performances in a different order gives a different win total. What if we continue this practice? Here are all six orderings that can be done:

In every alternative ordering, this team gets more wins. In one ordering, they even win all their games! But in most, then have a 2-1 record. Here’s a histogram showing how often each record occurs among the different reorderings:

83% of outcomes are better than their actual record.

Of this team, I would say one of two things. Either they have been unlucky so far, or they have done a poor job at winning close games.

We can do basically this same analysis on the 2026 Boston Red Sox, but because they have 74 games played instead of 3, we can’t calculate the win-loss totals for every possible reordering of their games. The number of different reorderings of 74 games is a huge number, it’s a number with 108 digits. If all the computers on Earth worked together generating those reorderings and evaluating the number of wins for each, and continued working on it for the entire age of the universe, they would barely scratch the surface of the problem.

Fortunately, we can get a good idea of the shape of things by random sampling. While holding the opponents’ scores in their original order, I randomly reordered the Red Sox scores, and counted win totals. And to ensure apples-to-apples comparisons, I did not use end-of-game scores for extra innings games; I always used the score at the end of nine innings. This could still create some imbalance in games where the home team wins after 8 ½ innings or so, but I did not try to compensate for that.

When I got a tie result, I split those results 50/50 – half wins, half losses. This led to some trials producing fractional win totals, such as 33.5. To keep the results to whole numbers of wins and losses, every fractional win total got its count split evenly between the whole number above it, and the whole number below it. For example, there were 42 trials that had a win total of 33.5. So 21 of those trials got counted as 33-win trials, and 21 of them got counted as 34-win trials.

After doing all that, here is a histogram of the results:

Their actual record is down at the lower end of this. Only 2.6% of trials resulted in 31 or fewer wins. That means 97.4% of outcomes were better than their actual record.

18.5% of trials resulted in the most likely win total of 36. This is just one win shy of a .500 record.

Interesting note: there is a formula called “Pythagorean Win-Loss” that predicts what a team’s record ought to be based on its total runs scored and runs allowed. While using less information than the process I described above, it produces the same prediction of a 36-38 record. You can look it up on Baseball-Reference.

But I can draw a few more conclusions. Such as that 59% of outcomes had the Red Sox with a losing record; 15% had them with a .500 record; and 26% had them with a winning record. So there is a greater than 1 in 4 chance that the Red Sox would have a winning record right now, and more than a 2 in 5 chance they would not be a losing team, if their run totals had just happened in a different order this year.

I draw the same conclusion for these 2026 Red Sox as I did for the example above: either they have been unlucky so far, or they have done a poor job at winning close games. My guess is a little of both. That they’re an unlucky team that nonetheless has some fundamental things to work on if they want to be a playoff-caliber team.

The rules for awarding wins cheated Ranger Suarez out of the win he deserved. There’s a better rule that doesn’t.

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Friday night (April 18, 2026) the Boston Red Sox got a thrilling 1-0 win in 10 innings over the Detroit Tigers.

Which pitcher did the most to help them win?

Here are the stat lines of their 3 pitchers in this game:

It should be clear that Ranger Suarez’s 8 shutout innings did more to help the Red Sox win than did Aroldis Chapman’s and Garrett Whitlock’s 1 shutout inning apiece.

But the win went to Whitlock, not Suarez.

This happens a lot, in my opinion. Too much. So many pitchers who deserve the win don’t get it, because of rules made in 1950 to finally consolidate all the competing standards for which pitcher should get the win. And when the top pitchers were still the only pitcher to pitch in the game for their team, in most of their starts. Changes in the game have made the use of relief pitchers an every-game occurrence, and have exposed the unfairness of these rules.

In my initial posts about this, Fixing how wins are awarded in baseball, and The how and the why of awarding wins to pitchers by the Merit Method, I describe a different method for awarding wins that I came up with 2 decades ago to address the problems with the current system, and why I think it’s better. Let’s see how this method, which I call the Merit Method, applies to Friday’s Red Sox game.

First we determine how many runs per inning the Red Sox scored in the game. The scored their 1 run with one out in the 10th inning, so that’s 1 run over 9 ⅓ innings, or 3/28 runs per inning, or about .107 runs per inning.

Now we credit each Red Sox pitcher in the game with that many runs per inning they pitched.

PitcherRuns credited for innings pitched (RC)
Ranger Suarez8 IP x 3/28 = 24/28 or .857 runs
Aroldis Chapman1 IP x 3/28 = 3/28 or .107 runs
Garrett Whitlock1 IP x 3/28 = 3/28 or .107 runs

Now from this we subtract the actual runs each pitcher allowed in the game.

PitcherRuns Credited (RC)Runs allowed (R)Runs Ahead (RA)
Ranger Suarez.8570.857
Aroldis Chapman.1070.107
Garrett Whitlock.1070.107

This gives a number for each pitcher called “Runs Ahead”. In this case, because no runs were given up by any Red Sox pitcher in Friday’s game, it’s the same as the Runs Credited for innings pitched for each pitcher.

The win then simply goes to the pitcher with the greatest number of Runs Ahead. In this case, it goes to Ranger Suarez, who as we decided before, did the most to help the team win the game.

Notice that the calculation of Runs Ahead is based on only two numbers – runs allowed, and innings pitched. That was a deliberate choice. These numbers are the only two real contributions a pitcher makes toward the goal of winning or losing a game. All other stats may describe how the pitcher gets to that goal, but only these two record progress toward the goal.

It’s a method that, I believe, will most closely align with the judgement “which pitcher did the most to help his team win the game”. I’d like to see it replace the current flawed methods. And then Ranger Suarez can get his win back.

Here are some other previous posts I’ve made about this method.

Nathan Eovaldi’s 6-game no-decision streak would be a 6-game win streak if wins were awarded in this way

Garrett Crochet pitched the best start of the year but didn’t get the win. We can fix that.

Tanner Houck deserves a win for his 5 perfect innings – and here’s a way to give it to him

Flawed rules took Tanner Houck’s win away. We can give it back.

Final comparison of Red Sox 2B, 3B options for 2026

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Serves me right for basing an analysis on media rumors.

In two previous posts (here and here), I compiled hitting, baserunning, and defense statistics for every 2B/3B/SS candidate the Red Sox were connected with this offseason by various news articles. One possibility that never came up in those articles was Isiah Kiner-Falefa, so I didn’t include him. So of course that’s who the Red Sox sign. So I started creating this update to my previous comparisons, to include him.

That’s when things really got weird.

In rapid succession, the Red Sox claimed infielder/catcher Mickey Gasper off waivers, then infielder Tsung-Che Cheng, then infielder Brendan Rodgers, then traded infielder David Hamilton and two pitchers to the Brewers for infielder Caleb Durbin, infielder Andruw Monasterio, and infielder Anthony Seigler. That’s 7 new infielders with major-league experience acquired in a 6-day span, none of whom I’d provided any analysis for previously. So, I needed to do some serious updating. (And Red Sox prognosticators in the media need to seriously update their prognosticating game, because they were all very wrong.)

It took me a while, but here it is finally. I added the two who are likely to stay on the major league roster to the comparison of acquisition options. I’ve added all of them (except for Tsung-Che Cheng, who has played only 3 games in the majors) to a comparison of actual Red Sox infielders. I kept David Hamilton in that comparison, for now.

About this chart

Numbers that are red are above average, the redder the better. Numbers in white are average. Numbers in blue are below average, the bluer the worse.

As before, the order was chosen based on number of plate appearances in 2025. Most on the left, least on the right. I made the header red for players currently on the Red Sox.

The WAR number has changed a bit. As before, “WAR” refers to the average of the Baseball Reference WAR, the FanGraphs WAR, and Baseball Prospectus’ WARP. But my projection to 650 plate appearances is not done by simply assuming each player would accumulate WAR at the same rate they did in their smaller number of plate appearances. There is a good reason for this. There is always some randomness in the results; some would refer to it as luck. While players with more plate appearances will see bigger swings in their totals due to luck, the size of those swings will be a smaller fraction of their overall numbers. So I switched from multiplying players’ WAR by

650PAActualPA\frac{650 PA}{Actual PA}

To multiplying by

650 PAActual PA\sqrt{\frac{650\ PA}{Actual\ PA}}

This ensures the scaled up effects of luck are not bigger for players with low PA than they are for players with 650 PA, even though it likely underestimates what their full-year contribution would have been based on actual talent.

I made the same adjustment for the first two baserunning stats.

For fielding stats, the adjustment was to multiply by

1200 inningsActual innings in the field\sqrt{\frac{1200\ innings}{Actual\ innings\ in\ the\ field}}

The one exception was for DRP, where the folks at Baseball Prospectus seem to have done some adjusting already. For this, the best adjustment worked out to be multiplying by

(1200 inningsActual innings in the field)0.8\left(\frac{1200\ innings}{Actual\ innings\ in\ the\ field}\right)^{0.8}

The Charts – comparing to other offseason targets

Here are the current top Red Sox “non-first-base” infielders (with red headers) compared to other players mentioned as potential offseason acquisitions.

Here are the same stats expressed in standard deviations from the average. These numbers provide a standard way of telling how good a player’s stat is compared to the rest of the players in the MLB. (It also doesn’t suffer the problem that percentiles has, which is that what looks like a big difference for players average numbers looks like a small difference for players with the best or worst numbers. Although with the log-normal distributions, what looks like a big difference among the worst players will look smaller among the best players, though the effect is not expected to be as pronounced.)

First thing to note is that Kiner-Falefa is the worst hitter in this list. He looks like what Marcelo Mayer was in 2025, but with less power and a low strikeout rate. And Mayer is expected to get better. Kiner-Falefa gets a very high rate of singles; an average amount of doubles; a low strikeout rate, for a good batting average. But his extremely low walk and home run rates tanks the value of his bat. If they need a guy to put the ball in play, he’s a good choice. Otherwise, his bat has little value.

Caleb Durbin, on the other hand, had pretty much a league-average bat in 2025, with a very low strikeout rate. As he was a rookie, we can look for there to be improvement going foreward. His launch angle and hard hit numbers show there’s some room for improvement in squaring up the ball.

Durbin’s baserunning was above average; it’s about the 4th best on this list of 17 players. Kiner-Falefa’s was average or just above average.

Durbin was one of the top 5 fielders on this list, solidly above average. Kiner-Falefa’s fielding, as with baserunning, was more average or a little above average. Durbin played almost exclusively at third base, so it’s hard to say how he’d do elsewhere. Kiner-Falefa has played many positions in his career, and shortstop more than anywhere else, although as a fielder he’s been much better at second and third. He’s also a good outfielder. He’s even caught a lot in his career, though he’s not good at it.

On the whole, the Red Sox did well in picking up Durbin. He’s pretty much better in every way than Kiner-Falefa, and compares well to the other players on this list who fans coveted. He’s a 3-tool guy who could grow into being a 4 or 5 tool guy, if his bat improves. Definitely starter material, and young and controllable.

More charts – comparing to other Red Sox infielders

Here are the charts comparing all the new guys – Caleb Durbin, Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Andruw Monasterio, Anthony Seigler, Brendan Rodgers, and Mickey Gasper (leaving out Tsung-Che Cheng as he only played in 3 games) – to existing Red Sox infielders Trevor Story, Romy Gonzalez, Marcelo Mayer, Nick Sogard, Nate Eaton, and even Kristian Campbell (though I don’t think his 2025 is representative of who he will be – well you could say the same of Mayer). I’m keeping David Hamilton in for now, for comparison purposes. Again, this leaves out the first basemen.

By my judgement, the top three in this bunch are Trevor Story, Romy Gonzalez, and Caleb Durbin. Until Marcelo Mayer is more major-league ready, I would want to see those three get the lion’s share of the playing time.

There is an interesting comparison to be made between newcomer Andruw Monasterio and incumbent utility guys Romy Gonzalez and Nick Sogard. I’ll go into that in a little depth below. But first, here are a few quick notes about the other guys.

Some quick observations

The guy they gave up, David Hamilton, was the best defender of the bunch. He was also one of the three best baserunners. His bat was poor, but I had the feeling that it would have been better with regular playing time. We must remember that with more playing time in 2024, he had a league-average bat. His good launch angle gives him occasional pop.

Andruw Monasterio’s numbers look really close to Nick Sogard’s, with slightly better defense and more pop in his bat. It makes him an overall more valuable player, and they are close in age. Sogard’s a solid, hard-nosed backup player, but he could see less time on the roster now.

Brendan Rodger’s bat was not good, but historically it has been better. He especially has had good numbers against lefties, and that could get him some playing time on this roster that just lost lefty-mashers Rob Refsnyder and Alex Bregman.

Mickey Gasper was just awful. Anthony Seigler’s bat was not good. These guys are depth options only. Hoping we don’t see them in the majors, unless they somehow get better.

Nate Eaton is a very intriguing player. He may be primed for a breakout season. We’ll see.

Not sure what to expect from “Big 3” alums Kristian Campbell and Marcelo Mayer. Hopefully one of them turns the corner in 2026.

Gonzalez/Monasterio/Sogard similarities

The top 5 lines of the hitting section of the chart break down the rates at which the hitters get different outcomes. Look at how similar those are for Romy Gonzalez, Andruw Monasterio, and Nick Sogard. Hang on, let me put together a version of the chart that has just those three players:

Those are very similar numbers in those top 5 hitting lines for singles, doubles & triples, home runs, walks, and strikeouts. Andruw Monasterio hits like Nick Sogard with more pop, and like Romy Gonzalez with fewer singles (his doubles numbers are a bit lower, but they should get boosted by Fenway Park, so I’ll consider them all equal there).

They’re all similar in age.

They’re all well-below-average baserunners despite having average to above-average speed.

Monasterio stands out a bit on defense, though. While the numbers for their defensive metrics seem to be saying that Monasterio is a little above average defensively while Gonzalez and Sogard are a little below average, if we look at my chart that expresses these defensive metrics as standard deviations above or below average, we see it saying that Monasterio is average, while Sogard and Gonzalez are below average;

They are also all strong against left-handed pitching. While Sogard is a switch hitter and the other two are righties, their platoon splits are those of right-handed hitters. Here are tables of current Red Sox position players against LHP and RHP:

While Gonzalez is the clear leader against lefties, they’re all (at least recently) well above average against them. Gonzalez and Monasterio are approaching average against righties, with Sogard a good bit behind them.

All told, Andruw Monasterio represents an upgrade over Nick Sogard, and a good alternative to Romy Gonzalez, should Gonzalez not be fully recovered from injury by opening day. While fans may appreciate Sogard’s solid if unspectacular play, I expect they’ll be seeing less of him on the field for the Red Sox going forward.