As the hours wound down on MLB’s collective bargaining agreement, the Red Sox took one last flier, signing left-handed pitcher James Paxton to a one-year deal worth $10 million, with a two-year, $26 million club option.

Never a bastion of durability — he’s never thrown enough innings in a major league season to qualify for the ERA title — Paxton’s had a particularly rough couple of seasons. In 2020, he underwent surgery to remove a peridiscal cyst, a type of spinal lesion, but last year’s late July start gave him enough time to be ready for the season. Unfortunately, when the season actually did get underway, he was missing about 3 mph from his fastball and suffered from significant soreness in his elbow. That soreness was diagnosed as a flexor strain, but there was no ligament damage found at the time. The New York Yankees had initially been hopeful that he’d recover to at least make a postseason appearance, but further setbacks prevented him from returning.

After signing with his old team, the Seattle Mariners, the 2021 season didn’t go any better. It only took five batters for an injury to knock Paxton out for the year, requiring Tommy John surgery. This can’t be described as anything but a brutal setback for a player who, from 2016-19, had finally settled into a pattern of being mostly healthy if used carefully. Read the rest of this entry »

The Red Sox have made their first free-agent signing of the offseason, bringing in Michael Wacha on a one-year, $7 million deal, as the Boston Globe’s Alex Speier reported. The 2022 season will see Wacha donning his fourth uniform in the last four years after he spent ’21 with the Rays, ’20 with the Mets, and everything up to that point with the Cardinals. That recent bouncing around comes as his performance has fallen on hard times, with three straight seasons with an ERA over 4.50. But while the 30-year-old righty may not be a splashy signing, teams have found ace-level performance in this price range in previous years, like the Giants signing Kevin Gausman to a $9 million deal in 2019, or the Blue Jays signing Robbie Ray for $8 million last offseason. And in Wacha’s case, there were some interesting things happening with him late in the year that make this deal worth diving into.

When Wacha is off, as has often been the case since 2019, he has a hard time keeping the ball in the yard. His HR/FB rate has nearly doubled from his prime years with the Cardinals and is the fourth worst in the majors since 2019. And that’s despite his velocity — 93.8 mph on his four-seamer on average last year — being nearly the same as it was when he was in St. Louis. Read the rest of this entry »

In his own words, Ivan Johnson is “just a normal 23-year-old guy with some tools… who is going to take it as far as I can go.” It’s a humble self-assessment. Currently the No. 14 prospect in the Cincinnati Reds system, the switch-hitting middle infielder is coming off a strong season split between Low-A Daytona and High-A Dayton. A fourth-round pick in the 2019 draft out of Chipola College, Johnson put up an identical 125 wRC+ at both levels.

The Atlanta native’s initial collegiate experience after matriculating from Kennesaw Mountain High School was brief. Originally at the University of Georgia, Johnson transferred to Chipola for his sophomore year. Talent-level wasn’t a major factor.

“It was circumstantial more than anything,” explained Johnson, who is playing with the Arizona Fall League’s Surprise Saguaros. “Our shortstop [Cam Shepherd] was coming off a Freshman All-America year, so I would have had to move over to second where we had an older guy [LJ Talley] who was more used to what the SEC was all about. So I wouldn’t say I wasn’t ready. I think I kind of showed that in my JUCO year.”

Johnson put up a 1.078 OPS at Chipola, impressing scouts not only with his production and plus athleticism, but also with the fact that he swings from both sides. That he does so is product of advice he received at young age. Told by “some older baseball minds” that it would advantageous once he began facing more-mature pitchers, the natural right-handed hitter decided “to just run with it.” Read the rest of this entry »

Position: Analyst

Department: Baseball Analytics
Reports To: Director, Baseball Analytics
Location: Boston, MA

Position Overview:
The Boston Red Sox are seeking an Analyst for the team’s Baseball Analytics department. The role will support all areas of Baseball Operations while working closely with Director of Baseball Analytics, and our team of analysts.

This is an opportunity to work in a fast-paced, intellectually curious environment and to impact player personnel and strategic decision making. Read the rest of this entry »

After a one-year hiatus due to the oddity and non-celebratory feeling of a season truncated by a raging pandemic, we’re bringing back the Elegy series in a streamlined format for a 2021 wrap-up. Think of this as a quick winter preview for each team, discussing the questions that faced each team ahead of the year, how they were answered, and what’s next. Do you like or hate the new format? Let me know in the comments below! We’ve already tackled the AL and NL Central; now it’s on to the East, starting with the American League.

Tampa Bay Rays (100-62)

The Big Question

The Rays are one of the best teams in history at competing on a year-in, year-out basis with a budget dwarfed by their rivals, right up there with Connie Mack’s, Charlie Finley’s, and Billy Beane’s A’s. But in a very tough division, they walk a very high player churn tightrope without a safety net. Would the Blake Snell trade finally be the one to knock Tampa Bay off that tightrope? The team has to stay smarter than its rivals, which is a lot tougher to do than it was in the heyday of any of the other teams listed above. It’s not so much of a question of if they got good value for Snell — they got real players in return — but whether the team’s rotation depth, already relatively thin with Charlie Morton‘s departure and Tyler Glasnow’s injury history, would be sufficient to prevent the Rays from having another down period. Read the rest of this entry »

For the first two installments of this feature, I graded the postseason performance of two managers per article. This time, I’m sure you were expecting the same: the losing managers for the ALCS and NLCS lined up for some random internet writer to opine on their faults. That’s still basically the idea here, but I’ll be honest: I didn’t feel like fitting a chance to enumerate Dave Roberts’ strange decision-making into only half an article. That main course is still to come; for now, you’ll just have to settle for an accounting of Alex Cora’s playoff acumen.

Lineups/Pinch Hitting

Grade: A-
The Red Sox aren’t built for versatility. By the end of the season, they mostly plugged in their best hitters and let them go to work. An injury to J.D. Martinez meant even less flexibility in several early games. Even so, I liked some of the small moves Cora made to extract a tiny bit of extra value from his lineup.

When Boston faced a lefty pitcher, Enrique Hernández led off, with Kyle Schwarber batting second. Against righties, that order was flipped. That might seem like a small thing, but I like that it always keeps a starter from having a (relatively) easy matchup when the order turns over for a third time. If you’re trying to get extra outs from your starter, you’ll be doing it at a disadvantage. And if you pull your starter, the second batter your reliever faces will have the platoon edge anyway. Read the rest of this entry »

The Astros are heading to their third World Series in the last five years, besting the Red Sox, 5–0, on Friday night to finish the ALCS in six games. The Red Sox had the pitcher they wanted on the mound in Nathan Eovaldi, but the offense they needed never materialized as Houston’s starter, Luis Garcia, pitched 5 2/3 masterful innings, striking out seven against just a single walk and one lonely hit.

As one of the first front offices to go all-in on modern analytics, Houston has long been an organization that takes glee in upending conventional wisdom. Despite a rotation torn apart long-term by veteran departures and short-term with an injury to Lance McCullers Jr. (and what possibly looked like one to Garcia), the Astros stymied Boston’s lineup. Pitching woes, schmitching woes; despite the very reasonable worries about the rotation, they limited the dangerous Red Sox offense to three runs over the final three games.

Everyone likes tales of comebacks or redemption, and Garcia, one of the AL Rookie of the Year favorites, provided a good one. He got knocked out in the third inning of his first start this postseason, giving up five runs against the White Sox in Houston’s lone ALDS loss. The follow-up performance didn’t go any better: the Red Sox scored five runs off of him before he was removed with a knee strain in the second inning.

Some teams would have been a little uneasy about starting Garcia in Game 6, but one of the reasons the Astros are in position to win another World Series championship is that they put a lot of faith in the young pitching talent that remained after most of their big-name starting pitching was gone. As with the Rays and their never-ending supply of nameless relievers who become all-world or the White Sox going with Carlos Rodón in Game 4 of the ALDS, there’s a lot of appeal in sticking with the people that got you here. There would have been second-guessing and what-ifs about not acquiring a J.A. Happ type a few months ago if Garcia had again struggled. But he didn’t, and while this wasn’t John Smoltz facing off against Jack Morris in the World Series, he dominated Boston’s offense in his 5 2/3 one-hit innings.

Read the rest of this entry »

BOSTON — For the second straight game, a close contest turned into a blowout. Fueled by a five-run fifth inning, the Astros rolled to a 9–1 win over the Red Sox in ALCS Game 5. Played under a full moon in front of 37,599 fans at Fenway Park, the victory gave Dusty Baker’s squad a 3–2 lead in a series that now moves to Texas for Game 6 on Friday.

Chris Sale and Framber Valdez were on the mound to start, and both did what has become all too rare in the modern-day postseason: provide quality innings beyond the third, fourth, and fifth. But it was Houston’s pitcher that ultimately shone brightest.

The game began with Jose Altuve flying out on a first-pitch changeup, an offering that Sale has struggled to execute in recent outings. The southpaw then recorded a strikeout and a groundout, both on fastballs, and finished the frame having thrown just nine pitches. Unlike in his earlier October starts, he looked sharp. Valdez was nearly as efficient in the bottom half, setting down the Red Sox in order on just a dozen pitches. Like his adversary, he recorded one of the three outs on a strikeout. Read the rest of this entry »

A year ago, the Red Sox were coming off an embarrassing face-plant of a season. They finished 24-36, missed the playoffs for the second straight year, and could only watch as Mookie Betts, the transcendent, homegrown superstar they had traded in February 2020, led the Dodgers to their first championship today in 29 years. Today, the retooled Red Sox are two wins away from another trip to the World Series thanks in part to Alex Verdugo, the most major league-ready of the three players they acquired for Betts in a deal that required restructuring — a trade at least somewhat vindicated by the team’s success thus far, whether or not they close out the ALCS, but one that still raises nettlesome issues about the way a marquee franchise has chosen to operate. Meanwhile, Betts has helped to position the Dodgers for a shot at returning to the World Series, and on Tuesday capped a four-run eighth-inning rally with an RBI double that put the Dodgers ahead to stay and enabled them to avoid a nearly-insurmountable three-games-to-none hole in the NLCS against the Braves.

Twenty months removed from one of the biggest blockbusters in recent memory, the trade continues to cast a long shadow over the postseason with the play of both Betts and Verdugo, the latter of whom has hit .324/.390/.486 in 37 PA for the Red Sox. Verdugo’s 138 wRC+ this October is fifth on the team behind the impossibly hot Kiké Hernández (269), J.D. Martinez (216), Rafael Devers (174), and Xander Bogaerts (166). Most notably, the Red Sox left fielder drove in the final three of Boston’s six runs in the AL Wild Card game against the Yankees via an RBI double and a two-run single, and plated two of Boston’s first four runs in their 14-6 Division Series Game 2 win over the Rays with a first-inning RBI single and a third-inning solo homer. He later made an over-the-wall snag of a Nelson Cruz foul ball and singled and scored the team’s ninth run.

Thus far in the ALCS against the Astros, Verdugo has gone 4-for-14 with three walks and two runs scored. On Monday, his one-out second-inning walk against José Urquidy turned into the first of the Red Sox’s six runs in the inning. In Tuesday’s loss, he finally went hitless, breaking an eight-game streak. Read the rest of this entry »

BOSTON — A pitchers’ duel through eight innings, Tuesday’s ALCS Game 4 culminated in an Astros offensive explosion. Turning the tables on a Boston team that had bashed its way to wins in Games 2 and 3, Houston scored seven times in the ninth inning to turn a 2-2 tie into a series-evening 9-2 rout.

What happened late was everything that didn’t happen early.

The Astros got the early edge they so desperately wanted. Two innocent outs into the top of the first, Alex Bregman turned on a Nick Pivetta fastball and lofted a 354-foot Fenway fly that settled in the Monster seats. The Astros had now homered in all seven of their postseason games, and Zack Greinke had a 1-0 lead as he took the mound for what could conceivably be his final big-league appearance.

The bottom of the first also began with a pair of outs, but then it was Boston’s turn to get homer-happy. Rafael Devers drew a walk, and with “Greinke” chants emanating from the stands, Xander Bogaerts drove a slider deep into the night. Statcast measured the two-run blast at 413 feet. Read the rest of this entry »