If 2026 was Jarren Duran’s floor, his floor has value: above average outfield defense, good baserunning, low-contact bat but with some pop. Of course we’ve seen his ceiling, in 2024, in which he gathered a significant number of MVP votes. There will be teams who’ll take that floor on the chance that Duran will regain some of that ceiling.
And the fix may be a simple as making him swing more slowly. Because that’s what he did in 2024. If you look at the Bat Tracking section of Jarren Duran’s Baseball Savant page, you’ll see that he was swinging more quickly in 2026 than he did in 2024. He was on average a slightly opposite field hitter in 2024, while being on average a pull hitter in 2026. You’ll also see that in 2024 he was more on-time than early on offspeed and breaking pitches, while in 2026 he was more early than on-time. A team that has noticed this could pick up Duran, convince him to slow down his swing a bit so that he’s on time for more of his swings, and reap some benefits.
Here are those images from Jarren Duran’s Baseball Savant page. The dashed lines represent the league-average curves.
But the Red Sox could do that, too. But now we have a logjam in the outfield, right? Four starter-worthy players for three positions?
Well, in 2026, thanks to injury, it took 4 of those guys to keep 3 of those guys on the field throughout the year. And 2025 was kind of the same story. And with Yoshida out much of both years, the DH role also helped give regular playing time to all the starting-caliber outfielders.
So frankly I don’t see a logjam, and I don’t see much value in trading Duran for whatever you can get. His presence on the roster solves more problems than it causes, in my book.
As for causing more problems than they solve, I’ll give that honor to Trevor Story, with Masataka Yoshida as a runner up. Both due to earn more than Jarren Duran in 2027. Even if having to cover a lot of their salary in a potential trade, the Red Sox might still shed enough payroll in a Story or Yoshida trade to pay most of Duran’s 2027 salary.
The Boston Red Sox have been said to have a logjam in the outfield because they have four starter-worthy outfielders in Wilyer Abreu, Ceddanne Rafaela, Roman Anthony, and (at least according to some) Jarren Duran. Of course they can use the DH position to field all four at once, but their other main outfielder – Masataka Yoshida – usually holds that position thanks to his defensive shortcomings, and his big contract means he’s not going anywhere. But thanks to injuries, they haven’t needed to bench any of these guys much at all, and so the outfield logjam hasn’t really looked like much of a logjam.
But I’m here to tell you there is another outfield logjam on the Red Sox, and it’s among the other outfielders on the 40-man roster (plus Yoshida). It’s a hard one to notice, though, because it has to do with their number of minor league options remaining, and data on that can be hard to find. I use SoxProspects.com to find them for the Red Sox, by going to their 40-man roster page. If you go there, you’ll see these numbers for the Red Sox outfielders:
The main four all have minor league options remaining. But of the five others, only Kristian Campbell has options that the Red Sox can be sure they can exercise. Yoshida technically has some, too, but there is a provision in his contract that requires the Red Sox to get his permission if they ever want to use them, and it’s assumed that he would never grant such permission.
So here’s what this means. Suppose the Red Sox make no changes to their outfield personnel over the winter. Opening day is approaching, and they have to get the major league roster down to 26. Teams will typically bring 5 outfielders, 6 infielders, and 2 catchers onto that roster. After Rafaela, Abreu, Anthony, and Duran, that leaves room for one more outfielder. Now the rules say that even if a player on the 40-man roster was playing in the minors at the end of the previous season, as Nate Eaton was, he will still need to be optioned to the minors at the start of the next season, if that’s where they want him to be. So that means after keeping one of these backups to sit on the major league bench, the other 4 would need to be sent to the minors.
Kristian Campbell can just be optioned to the minors. But the other three cannot be. They would need to be Designated For Assignment (DFA’d) instead, if the Red Sox want to send them to AAA. But that sends them through waivers, where any other MLB team could claim that player. There’s a chance that the Red Sox could lose all three, and then their outfield depth would evaporate.
This is a problem, and the Red Sox surely have recognized it. One way out is to trade several of these depth pieces for outfielders that do have options remaining. Or they could trade them for whoever they can get, then acquire through free agency or other trades some depth outfielders with options.
There’s no rush to do this based on the logjam I’ve described here – they can take all winter, into spring training, to get it done. But there is another roster crunch coming that has some urgency to it, and it could give the Red Sox a chance to “kill two birds with one stone”, as they say. Five days after the World Series ends, players who have been on the 60-day disabled list must come off that list. But putting a player on the 60-day disabled list takes them off the 40-man roster, and taking them off the list puts them back on it. Well the Red Sox have 7 players on that list. That will add 7 players to the 40-man roster in just 3 days (as it is now two days since the World Series ended). They have three players who became free agents yesterday, which has opened 3 spots on the 40-man, but when these other 7 coming back to it, there will be 4 players who they cannot fit. So in the next 3 days they must get 4 players off of the 40-man roster. To do it, they can trade players for prospects, or they can DFA players. Trading gives you something back, so that would be the preferred route.
And the Red Sox have already done this. Yesterday they traded Nate Eaton for 18-year-old pitching prospect Jareth Rayo, a rookie league pitcher. Because Rayo was not on the Athletics’ 40-man roster, he does not go on the Red Sox 40-man, but Eaton comes off. That creates one space, out of the four they need.
Yesterday the Red Sox also traded shortstop Tsung-Che Cheng to the Tigers for cash, clearing a second spot.
I’m expecting the Red Sox to attempt to trade one more of these outfielders over the next 3 days. My bet would be on Yoshida, who has been a reliable contact bat, but one whose run value is (as measured by OPS+ or wRC+) has only been slightly above average. Jahmai Jones is kind of a right-handed version of Yoshida, but his bat has shown more promise than Yoshida’s of late, and he’s a little better than Yoshida on defense. Moving Yoshida will be more difficult, though, because of the $18M he’s owed this year; the Red Sox would almost certainly need to pay for some of it to get a deal done. The complications that brings may make it impossible to do in the short time frame of the next 3 days.
Whether the Red Sox do it now or do it later, I’m expecting a lot of turnover among their depth outfielders by opening day of 2027.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Pitcher
Runs credited for innings pitched (RC)
Ranger Suarez
8 IP x 3/28 = 24/28 or .857 runs
Aroldis Chapman
1 IP x 3/28 = 3/28 or .107 runs
Garrett Whitlock
1 IP x 3/28 = 3/28 or .107 runs
Now from this we subtract the actual runs each pitcher allowed in the game.
Pitcher
Runs Credited (RC)
Runs allowed (R)
Runs Ahead (RA)
Ranger Suarez
.857
0
.857
Aroldis Chapman
.107
0
.107
Garrett Whitlock
.107
0
.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.
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
To multiplying by
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
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
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.
