2022 ZiPS Projections: Boston Red Sox

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Boston Red Sox.

Batters

By winning 92 games, the Red Sox comfortably exceeded most expectations for the team in 2021. How do they do it again? There’s a path available, though not all the elements are in the organization right now.

The part Boston already has sorted is the offensive players who did the most to push the team to fourth in the American League in runs scored. Rafael Devers, Xander Bogaerts, and Enrique Hernández are back, and there’s no reason to expect any kind of decline from the first two, while Hernández isn’t remotely in the steep decline phase yet. Alex Verdugo, J.D. Martinez, and the catcher tandem are projected to give roughly league-average performances, hardly surprising results. There may be some grumbling about JDM’s projection, but even if ZiPS can mostly overlook his mess of a 2020 — wouldn’t it be nice if we could all forget that year? — it can’t forget that he’s also a 34-year-old designated hitter. Yes, David Ortiz aged incredibly well (and ZiPS was weirdly optimistic he would), but most players of the type do not. Martinez shouldn’t be a problem in 2022, but the day when that will become likely is coming.

The weakest parts of the lineup, at least if you agree with the projections, are apparent: center field, left field, and first base. Yes, Jackie Bradley Jr. had a terrific short 2020 (ZiPS saw that season as a drastic over-performance of his peripheral data from that campaign), but before that season, it looked like he was in steady decline, and he was abysmal for the Brewers last year. Bobby Dalbec has flashed considerable power at first base, but there’s just not much else there. And if you’re going to be competitive as a one-dimensional hitter at first, that dimension better be universe-shaking, not just merely good. If the Red Sox don’t make a short-term move here, I hope Triston Casas is called up very quickly if he’s hitting in Triple-A; ZiPS isn’t projecting him to be amazing, but his upside is much higher than Dalbec’s.

I’m less worried about the hole in left, because while I can imagine the Red Sox just rolling with JBJ and Dalbec, I don’t believe that they’d actually enter the season with Jarren Duran and Christin Stewart getting the at-bats in left. Honestly, I think they’d put Hernández out there and start Christian Arroyo at second before doing that. This is one place I expect them to be active when the offseason resumes, and I’ll be very disappointed if they are not.

There’s not much excitement in the high minors here, and the bench is a little light, though that’s another place I expect the Red Sox to make some low-key additions.

Pitchers

One of the keys to the Red Sox exceeding expectations in 2021 was the rotation’s health. With only Nick Pivetta spared some kind of significant injury history, the ability of the team to use their desired starting pitchers was easily the most significant source of variation in Boston’s preseason projections. In the simulations where they got lucky with the health of pitchers like Nathan Eovaldi, Garrett Richards, and Chris Sale, the Red Sox frequently won around 90 games. When they didn’t, the organization’s lack of impact high-level arms caused the wheels to come off very quickly.

In 2021, the team got the health they needed. Only seven pitchers received multiple starts for Boston, and while not all of them were great, the rotation was stable. And it was enough. But it’s a hard thing to count on for a second straight season; my cats don’t push a glass balanced on the edge of the counter to the kitchen floor every time, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to entrust them with the care of those glasses. James Paxton was a fun pickup, but he’s yet another pitcher with an injury history. The projections are more stable this year because ZiPS is simply more sold on some of the backup plans, but it still would be nice if the Red Sox had another durable pitcher on the roster.

Another element of Boston’s 2021 success was a very solid bullpen, and that’s one thing ZiPS sees persisting into the coming season. A lot of the pitchers on the team improved their long-term projected outlook (Garrett Whitlock, Darwinzon Hernandez, Josh Taylor), and while no one gets the kind of dominating projection to put them in elite territory, there’s a lot of very good performance expected from bow to almost stern. Perhaps an additional arm at the back of the rotation would help, but with the Red Sox accumulating a lot of maybe-healthy starting pitchers, they may have one or two of those names to fatten the relief corps in a swing role.

I’m calling the Red Sox for mid-80s wins as of right now, but I think they’ll likely add two or three wins in left, and either something more creative in center or another workhorse starter before it’s all said and done.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned, players who will miss 2022 due to injury, and players who were released in 2021. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a big band orchestra that only plays nu-metal versions of baroque cantatas, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.36, similar to the post-June substance-enforcement environment.

Both hitters and pitchers are ranked by projected zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those that appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR. ZiPS is assuming that the designated hitter will continue in force in 2022.

ZiPS is agnostic about future playing time by design. For more information about ZiPS, please refer to this article, or get angry at Dan on Twitter.