Now with their fourth World Series ring since 2004, we can safely say that any remaining curse on the Boston Red Sox has been exorcised with extreme prejudice. Surprisingly, their 108-win, 2018 season was the first hundred-win season for the franchise since 1946, back when Julio Franco was about 35.

The Setup

This World Series-winning Red Sox team should probably considered part of a new dynasty, rather than as the final installment of the one that won three World Series championships in the 21st century. Obviously, the players are different; 14 years have passed, and even awesome players are subject to the ravages of time. But the front office also has a very different look.

Theo Epstein has now been gone for nearly a decade, but in the years after his departure — and the brief interregnum featuring a dashing escape from Fenway Park dressed in a gorilla suit — the front office had a distinct flavor of the Epsteinian dynasty, with Ben Cherington, Jed Hoyer, and Mike Hazen all having ties to Epstein.

When Dave Dombrowski took over as President of Baseball Operations at the end of 2015, the ultimate responsibility for the day-to-day decision-making shifted for the first time to someone without ties to the 2004 champions. The Epsteinians ended with less bloodshed than a lot of great dynasties; Hazen getting a job in Arizona is hardly comparable to the violent end of Andronikos I Komnenos. (I swear I’ll stop now before the rest of the article is just me comparing Red Sox transactions to Byzantine battles.)

It’s easy to forget in the wake of a trophy in 2013 — flags fly forever, yada yada yada — but that victory was sandwiched between three last-place finishes in the AL East. To find the last time the Red Sox had consecutive losing seasons, you’d have to look back to around the strike.

The 2016 roster looked very different than the 2013 one. Only two starting position players remained from 2013, Dustin Pedroia and David Ortiz, and the latter was in his grand farewell procession. The 2013 rotation was gone, except for Clay Buchholz, and of the main bullpenniérs, only Koji Uehara remained.

After adding David Price and Chris Sale in consecutive offseasons, the 2017-2018 winter had its own big highlight: the team’s re-signing of Mitch Moreland. OK, we all know that’s a lie; Boston successfully waited out a winter during which many of the other big market teams did little with their cash, and brought in J.D. Martinez on a six-year, $110 million contract. It was the rare signing of a star free agent on Martinez’s side of the defensive spectrum that ZiPS didn’t immediately start digitally laughing at.

With a young offensive core — 30-year-old J.D. Martinez was the old man of the valuable parts of the lineup — and a hopeful return to health and form from David Price, Boston rightly felt that they didn’t have to add too much else. Unlike some of those other high-revenue teams, Boston was on no quest to get under the luxury tax threshold for 2018, already having reset its penalties in 2017 (the Red Sox payroll resulted in a nearly $12 million luxury tax payment).

The Projection

ZiPS projected Boston to be in a close battle with the Yankees going into the season, with a two-win deficit that could evaporate by simply making a slightly different set of assumptions. The computer projected Boston to have a 78% chance of making the playoffs, far better than any projected runner-up, with the next-best being the St. Louis Cardinals at 53%.

ZiPS did see some weaknesses in the team, viewing the catching situation as a bit of a mess and believing Mitch Moreland and Hanley Ramirez to be rather unambitious choices at first base. ZiPS wasn’t super-confident about the depth at the back of the rotation, either, and was concerned the No. 4 and 5 starter situation could unravel very quickly with a few Nasty Surprises in the health department.

The Results

Well, they won 108 games and the World Series, so you could say that there was definitely some more-than-passable adequacy going on. The weird thing about the Red Sox season is that as 108-win teams go, it really wasn’t all sunshine, lollipops, and Mike Trout Everything.

Unusually, you could see a lot of what-ifs scenarios, none of which were all that crazy, in which Boston could have easily finished with even more wins. The catching Cerberus hit like a three-headed hot dog, Moreland and the released Ramirez were in fact rather mediocre at first (though Moreland, as usual, wore his surprise breakout costume for a couple of months), and the back of the rotation did in fact have a couple of Nasty Surprises. Rafael Devers growing from his rookie season instead of regressing from it could have added a couple more wins as well.

The contours of the Red Sox season weren’t surprising, but the magnitude of the good things were. The Twitter Baseballosphere all joked about a specific article written before the season, in which a Boston-area writer said Mookie Betts was as good as Mike Trout (I was one of the sarcastic quippers, naturally). But Betts actually was as good as Trout in 2018, as weird as that claim appeared at the time.

Betts and Martinez gave the team two MVP candidates and Chris Sale was, as usual, a legitimate Cy Young candidate. One could argue that the Boston Red Sox were a bit like a very sunny version of the Colorado Rockies, a team that also had two MVP candidates and a legitimate Cy Young candidate, but surrounded their core with an Ian Demond-Gerardo Parra Imagination Christmas.

Unlike Colorado, Boston never stopped trying to find opportunities to deal with their team’s limited weak spots. Steve Pearce gave the team a legitimate right-handed role player who could do at first base what Hanley proved too inept to accomplish. Ian Kinsler was brought in to patch the hole at second, even if the move failed to be all that profitable. And Nathan Eovaldi solidified the back of the rotation and finished the season having completely resurrected his career.

Boston’s regular-season pummeling of the league continued, with the team steamrolling over the Yankees, Astros, and Dodgers — the majority of the teams ZiPS that thought were better going into the season — and only dropping three games over the entire postseason.

And while he didn’t have a Cy Young-type season, it was nice to see Price eviscerate that laziest of baseball storylines, that of the postseason choke-artist. After a lousy start against the Yankees in the ALDS, Price only allowed seven runs over his remaining 24.1 innings. And after having to make an appearance in that crazy 18-inning Game 3, Price allowed just one run in seven innings, on one day’s rest filling in for Chris Sale, who was hospitalized with a stomach ailment.

What Comes Next?

Over the next few years, the Red Sox will likely have harder decisions to make than their eternal rivals, the New York Yankees. Chris Sale, Rick Porcello, and Xander Bogaerts are free agents after the 2019 season, and if he plays just as well as he did last season, Martinez may very well join them by using his 2019 or 2020 opt-outs. Mookie Betts hits free agency after the 2020 season as well.

That’s a lot of talent to see leave, and keeping that group together will be expensive; the team has already hinted that it will pose a great challenge to sign all of them. This team blew through the luxury tax threshold and that’s with Sale, Betts, and Bogaerts making under $30 million combined. If Martinez doesn’t opt-out, the Red Sox already have a hair under $110 million baked in the 2020 cake for just six players. If you bring back Sale for $30 million, and Bogaerts for $20 million, even with letting Porcello walk, that’s $159 million with 17 roster spots left to fill.

And those spots won’t be cheap to fill. Using the framework developed by Craig Edwards, and the pre-2018 prospect ranks of Kiley McDaniel and Eric Longenhagen, Boston had the second-least value in their farm system, ahead of only the Mariners. While the McDongenhagen analysis for this winter isn’t out yet, I daresay that there weren’t enough victories in the minors (Michael Chavis was suspended, Sam Travis was terrible, and Triston Casas can’t single-handedly turn around the farm system) to drastically change this ranking for the better.

As Boston sees its young core become expensive without easy answers from the farm, the team will have to be creative (or get much more comfortable with the luxury tax) in the coming years to not have a significant down turn in the franchise’s fortunes. Transitioning to the team’s next core without spending $300 million a year may be the biggest challenge for the dynasty of the Dombrowskii.

ZiPS Projection – Mookie Betts

Let’s just bask in the Mookie-y goodness and hail to whatever we find in the sunlight that surrounds him.

I asked ZiPS to give me all Betts’ remaining four-WAR seasons in the projections, and it returned a nice little collection of superstar seasons. All-told, ZIPS sees 52 WAR remaining for Betts, which puts him above 80 WAR, a definite Hall of Fame trajectory. Even if his defense doesn’t age as well as ZIPS thinks it will, knocking off ten runs a year from his defense starting in 2019 would still leave him at nearly 70 wins, and that’s way too harsh and adjustment.

That wraps up the Elegy for ’18 series; next year’s series will commence with the Orioles sometime in late March. Thanks for joining me in my final goodbyes to the 2018 season, even if they went week past when I’d intended!

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

At last, we’ve reached the final installment of my round-up of the 14 players on this year’s Hall of Fame ballot who are certain to fall below the 5% threshold, with most of them being shut out entirely. It’s no tragedy that they’ll miss out on plaques in Cooperstown, but their triumphs and travails are worth remembering just the same.

Jon Garland

Known mainly for his durability, Garland was the perfect embodiment of a League Average Innings Muncher (LAIM), a term coined by blogger Travis Nelson in late 2003, generally describing dogged but unspectacular sorts such as Dave Burba, Jeff Suppan, and Steve Trachsel who rarely deviated from average run prevention by more than 10%. Over a nine-year span from 2002-2010, the heavy sinker-reliant Garland never made fewer than 32 starts or threw fewer than 191.2 innings, only once finishing with an ERA+ outside of the 91-to-111 range. In 2005, he put it all together, making his lone All-Star team and helping the White Sox to their first championship in 88 years.

Born September 27, 1979 in Valencia, California, Garland grew to 6-foot-5 1/2 and 200 pounds by the time he was a senior in high school (1997), able to throw 90 mph when that was a big deal. That year, he made a variety of pre- and postseason All-America teams, and planned to go to the University of Southern California, but when he was chosen with the 10th pick of the amateur draft by the Cubs, he signed for a $1.325 million bonus and was on his way. Less than 14 months later, he was traded to the White Sox straight up for reliever Matt Karchner in a rare crosstown deal; the Cubs got all of 60.2 innings of 0.1 WAR relief work in exchange for their top pick from the previous season.

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Would MLB actually go so far as to ban the shift? Asked about that conjecture, David Stearns made it clear that he’s no fan of the idea. Not because he’s against change, but rather because change is already a big part of baseball. More specifically — yes, there have been exceptions to the rule — organic charge is already a big part of baseball.

“Teams have evolved,” the Brewers GM said during the Winter Meetings. “Strategies have evolved. Players adjust, and they will on this one as well. If shifts become completely deflating to certain profiles of players, we will value them accordingly. Things will balance themselves out. Look, we’ve been moving fielders around for decades. I would not be in favor of a ban on shifts.”

Ron Gardenhire feels otherwise. He favors an inorganic fix to the perceived (and arguably nonexistent) problem.

“I like two guys on each side,” the Detroit manager stated in equally-stern terms. “I’ve always said that. Or at least keep them all in the dirt rather than in the grass. Ask Victor Martinez. He might have hit .300 this year if they just had them on the infield. Yeah, I am old school in that respect.”

The veteran skipper elaborated on his viewpoint in a manner suggestive of… an organic substance? Going pure Gardy, he name-checked the man erroneously credited with inventing the game, another sport, and a comedy duo from a bygone era. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Yet another installment of our quick look at the 14 players on this year’s Hall of Fame ballot who are certain to fall below the 5% threshold — with most of them being shut out entirely — but are worth remembering just the same.

Kevin Youkilis

At the major league level, Youkilis’ reputation — “Euclis: the Greek god of walks,” as nicknamed by Michael Lewis in the 2003 bestseller, Moneyball — preceded his arrival by over a year. First a source of friction between the A’s analytically-minded front office and their scouts ahead of the 2001 draft, and later a player they coveted as a potential acquisition, Youkilis was Billy Beane’s white whale, forever eluding Oakland’s general manager. Though he lasted just 10 years in the majors, he hit .281/.382/.478 (123 OPS+) while making three All-Star teams, and winning a Gold Glove and two championship rings, one as the Red Sox’s starting first baseman.

Born in Cincinnati on March 15, 1979, Youkilis did not have any actual Greek ancestry. Via Sports Illustrated’s Mark Bechtel in 2007:

Youk’s family history reads like a Michael Chabon novel: Back in the 19th century in Romania, males were conscripted at the age of 16. The Cossacks in the region weren’t known for their tolerance, so many Jews tried to avoid enlisting in the army. Youk’s great-great-great-grandfather—no one is sure what his first name was, but the family name was Weiner (it’s actually pronounced WINE-er)—moved to Greece, where the family had friends. After a year or two he got homesick and returned to Romania, but he assumed a Greek name so he could avoid the army and jail. And with that, the Youkilis family was born.

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In 2018, I once again had the pleasure of interviewing hundreds of people within baseball. Many of their words were shared in my Sunday Notes column, while others came courtesy of the FanGraphs Q&A series, the Learning and Developing a Pitch series, the Manager’s Perspective series, and a smattering of feature stories. Here is a selection of the best quotes from this year’s conversations.

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“My slider will come out and it will be spinning, spinning, spinning, and then as soon as it catches, it picks up speed and shoots the other way. Whoosh! It’s like when you bowl. You throw the ball, and then as soon as it catches, it shoots with more speed and power. Right? “ — Sergio Romo, Tampa Bay Rays pitcher, January 2018

“One of the biggest lessons we learn is that iron sharpens iron. That is 100% how we try to do things with the Rockies — hiring people that are smarter than we are, and more skilled, and have different skills that can complement, and train people to be better at their jobs than I am at my job. That’s how you advance an organization.” — Jeff Bridich, Colorado Rockies GM, January 2018

“We could split hairs and say, ‘Hey, you’re playing in front of a thousand drunk Australians instead of 40,000 drunk Bostonians, and you’re living with a host family instead of at a five-star hotel.’ But The Show is The Show, and in Australia the ABL is The Show.” — Lars Anderson, baseball nomad, January 2018

“Baseball is heaven. Until our closer blows the game.” — Michael Hill, Miami Marlins president of baseball operations, January 2018 Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2013 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research, and was expanded for inclusion in The Cooperstown Casebook, published in 2017 by Thomas Dunne Books. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

On the field, Curt Schilling was at his best when the spotlight shone the brightest. A top starter on four pennant winners and three World Series champions, he has a strong claim as the best postseason pitcher of his generation. Founded on pinpoint command of his mid-90s fastball and a devastating splitter, his regular season dominance enhances his case for Cooperstown. He’s one of just 16 pitchers to strike out more than 3,000 hitters, and is the owner of the highest strikeout-to-walk ratio in modern major league history.

That said, Schilling never won a Cy Young award and finished with “only” 216 regular-season wins, a problem given that only three starters with fewer than 300 wins have been elected since 1992. Two of those — Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz — came in 2015, suggesting that others could follow in their wake.

Schilling was something of a late bloomer who didn’t click until his age-25 season, after he had been traded three times. He spent much of his peak pitching in the shadows of even more famous (and popular) teammates, which may have helped to explain his outspokenness. Former Phillies manager Jim Fregosi nicknamed him “Red Light Curt” for his desire to be at the center of attention when the cameras were rolling. Whether expounding about politics, performance-enhancing drugs, the QuesTec pitch-tracking system, or a cornerstone of his legend, Schilling wasn’t shy about telling the world what he thought.

For better and worse, that desire eventually extended beyond the mound. Schilling used his platform to raise money for research into amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and, after a bout of oral cancer, recorded public service announcements on the dangers of smokeless tobacco. In 1996, USA Today named him “Baseball’s Most Caring Athlete.” But in the years since his retirement, his actions and inflammatory rhetoric on social media have turned him from merely a controversial and polarizing figure to one who has continued to create problems for himself. Normally, that wouldn’t be germane to the Hall of Fame discussion, but his promotion of a tweet promoting the lynching of journalists — yes, really — during the tense 2016 presidential campaign seemed to have finally brought his momentum to a screeching halt.

Schilling climbed from 38.8% in 2013 to 52.3% in 2016, even while taking a backseat to a quintet of pitchers — Martinez, Smoltz, Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux, and Randy Johnson — whose hardware and milestones led to first-ballot entries. Due in large part to his social media and political battles, he plummeted to 45.0% in 2017, as several previous supporters left him off their ballots even when they had space to spare, either explicitly or implicitly citing the character clause. Yet he regained most of the lost ground last year, even while maintaining his noxious public persona, and the early returns on the 2018 ballot suggest his candidacy is back on track even if he himself has gone off the rails.

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J.D. Martinez received a lot of props this year for how he helped his Red Sox teammates approach at bats. A direct correlation between the cerebral slugger’s arrival in Boston and the increased offensive production from the likes of Mookie Betts and Xander Bogaerts is impossible to prove, but there’s no disputing his influence. Few hitters hone their craft as studiously — and pass on their knowledge as effectively — as does Martinez.

A question about his mindset jump-started a conversation this summer. I asked the outfielder/DH if he processes information in much the same manner on both sides of the ball. In other words, does he approach defense — 83% of his career games have been in the outfield — like he approaches offense.

“That’s kind of a weird question,” opined Martinez. “I think I evaluate them the same, but you’re not going to be as analytical with your defense, because there’s not nearly as much data to help you go about it.”

I countered that a lot of work goes into defense, including how to position opposing hitters against certain pitchers, and in different counts. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2013 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Roger Clemens has a reasonable claim as the greatest pitcher of all time. Cy Young, Christy Mathewson, Walter Johnson, and Grover Cleveland Alexander spent all or most of their careers in the dead-ball era, before the home run was a real threat, and pitched while the color line was still in effect, barring some of the game’s most talented players from participating. Sandy Koufax and Tom Seaver pitched when scoring levels were much lower and pitchers held a greater advantage. Koufax and 2015 inductees Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez didn’t sustain their greatness for nearly as long. Greg Maddux didn’t dominate hitters to nearly the same extent.

Clemens, meanwhile, spent 24 years in the majors and racked up a record seven Cy Young awards, not to mention an MVP award. He won 354 games, led his leagues in the Triple Crown categories (wins, strikeouts and ERA) a total of 16 times, and helped his teams to six pennants and a pair of world championships.

Alas, whatever claim “The Rocket” may have on such an exalted title is clouded by suspicions that he used performance-enhancing drugs. When those suspicions came to light in the Mitchell Report in 2007, Clemens took the otherwise unprecedented step of challenging the findings during a Congressional hearing, but nearly painted himself into a legal corner; he was subject to a high-profile trial for six counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to Congress. After a mistrial in 2011, he was acquitted on all counts the following year. But despite the verdicts, the specter of PEDs won’t leave Clemens’ case anytime soon, even given that in March 2015, he settled the defamation lawsuit filed by former personal trainer Brian McNamee for an unspecified amount.

Amid the ongoing Hall of Fame-related debates over hitters connected to PEDs — most prominently Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa — it’s worth remembering that the chemical arms race involved pitchers as well, leveling the playing field a lot more than some critics of the aforementioned sluggers would admit. The voters certainly haven’t forgotten that when it comes to Clemens, whose share of the vote has approximated that of Bonds. Clemens debuted with 37.6% of the vote in 2013 and only in 2016 began making significant headway, climbing to 45.2% thanks largely to the Hall’s purge of voters more than 10 years removed from covering the game. Like Bonds, he surged above 50% — a historically significant marker towards future election — in 2017, benefiting from voters rethinking their positions in the wake of the election of Bud Selig. The former commissioner’s roles in the late-1980s collusion scandal and in presiding over the proliferation of PEDs within the game dwarf the impact of individual PED users and call into question the so-called “character clause.”

Clemens’ march towards Cooperstown stalled somewhat last year even as he climbed 3.2 percentage points to 57.3%. Whether or not the open letter from Hall of Fame Vice Chairman Joe Morgan pleading to voters not to honor players connected to steroids had an impact, the end result was another year run off the clock. He still has a shot at reaching 75% before his eligibility runs out in 2022, but he needs to regain momentum.

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The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2017 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

A savant in the batter’s box, Manny Ramirez could be an idiot just about everywhere else — sometimes amusingly, sometimes much less so. The Dominican-born slugger, who grew up in the Washington Heights neighborhood of upper Manhattan, stands as one of the greatest hitters of all time, a power-hitting righthanded slugger who spent the better part of his 19 seasons (1993–2011) terrorizing pitchers. A 12-time All-Star, Ramirez bashed 555 home runs and helped the Indians and the Red Sox reach two World Series apiece, adding a record 29 postseason homers along the way. He was the World Series MVP for Boston in 2004, when the club won its first championship in 86 years.

For all of his prowess with the bat, Ramirez’s lapses — Manny Being Manny — both on and off the field are legendary. There was the time in 1997 that he “stole” first base, returning to the bag after a successful steal of second because he thought Jim Thome had fouled off a pitch… the time in 2004 that he inexplicably cut off centerfielder Johnny Damon’s relay throw from about 30 feet away, leading to an inside-the-park home run… the time in 2005 when he disappeared mid-inning to relieve himself inside Fenway Park’s Green Monster… the time in 2008 that he high-fived a fan in mid-play between catching a fly ball and doubling a runner off first… and so much more.

Beneath those often comic lapses was an intense work ethic, apparent as far back as his high school days, that allowed Ramirez’s talent to flourish. But there was also a darker side, one that, particularly after he left the Indians, went beyond the litany of late arrivals to spring training, questionable absences due to injury (particularly for the All-Star Game), and near-annual trade requests. Most notably, there was his shoving match with 64-year-old Red Sox traveling secretary Jack McCormick in 2008, which prefigured Ramirez’s trade to the Dodgers that summer, and a charge of misdemeanor domestic violence/battery in 2011 after his wife told an emergency operator that her husband had slapped her face, causing her to hit her head against the headboard of the bed. (That domestic violence charge was later dropped after his wife refused to testify.) Interspersed with those two incidents were a pair of suspensions for performance-enhancing drug use, the second of which ran him out of the majors.

For all of the handwringing about PED-tinged candidates on the Hall of Fame ballot over the past decade, Ramirez is the first star with actual suspensions on his record to gain eligibility since Rafael Palmeiro in 2011. Like Palmeiro, Ramirez has numbers that would otherwise make his enshrinement a lock. In his 2017 ballot debut, he received 23.8% — a higher share than Mark McGwire or Sammy Sosa, players who were never suspended — from an electorate that appeared to be in the midst of softening its hardline stance against PED users, but dipped to 22.0% in 2018. He won’t get into Cooperstown anytime soon, but he won’t fall off the ballot anytime soon, either.

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

Batters

Obviously, the top of the offense is extremely strong, with reigning MVP Mookie Betts and one of the most dangerous hitters today, J.D. Martinez, who can be forgiven for being relatively one-dimensional when that one dimension involves a 170 wRC+ and an OPS over 1.000. But there were some cracks in the back-end in 2018, with Eduardo Núñez a stretch as a full-time second baseman and Mitch Moreland inevitably cooling off after a hot start to finish with the Usual Mitch Moreland Stats. The team brought in Steve Pearce and Ian Kinsler to dampen these issues. Pearce’s tenure was much more successful, but he also remains a role player heading into his late-30s, albeit a very good one. I remain hopeful about Rafael Devers‘ future given that most players his age are still in the minors, but you can’t just wave away the fact that he regressed significantly both at the plate and in the field in 2018. Boston’s three-headed catcher-beast contributed defensively, and did a better job framing than dirty cops in a Brian De Palma movie, but you’d still like their bats to improve to a more normal version of terrible than we saw last season.

The good news is that when your highs are high and your lows are low, it’s easier to make a significant addition than it is if you have a team that’s fairly average from top to bottom. J.T. Realmuto would be just about the perfect fit for the team if the Marlins were motivated to make a reasonable trade. I suspect the Red Sox will be content with Moreland and Pearce at first as they more pressing needs on the roster. And Pearce probably was the best first baseman available in free agency, unless you’ve received some weird news from the future about how 2019 was the The Summer of Duda.

Pitchers

There’s not a lot to complain about in the rotation, so long as everyone is healthy. All five starters are projected to have ERAs better than league-average, and ZiPS, like Steamer, is cautiously optimistic about Nathan Eovaldi’s future, even though 200 innings shouldn’t be the default expectation for a pitcher with his injury history. Some depth would be nice, but Steven Wright is likely a perfectly capable emergency option and the bullpen, as constituted, is probably a below-average group. Even a diminished Craig Kimbrel is a tough reliever to lose. ZiPS thinks a lot of the no-name relievers can be adequate, especially Colten Brewer, a hard cutter/curve hurler picked up from the Padres a few weeks ago.

Bench and Prospects

The problem with the Red Sox farm system is that while it’s far from empty, trades and successful graduations have depleted the upper minors considerably, to the point that if the team is looking for a mid-season reinforcement, they’re more likely to call up a prospect rather than trade them for a more veteran solution. Sam Travis now has a .713 OPS in nearly a thousand Triple-A plate appearances; ZiPS has almost written him completely off as a prospect at this point. And there are no starting pitching prospects that are all that interesting for 2019. That Rusney Castillo has one of the best projections of the players currently at Triple A at .269/.304/.370 is a pretty good example of just how thin the high minors currently are. The big exception here is Michael Chavis, who ZiPS sees developing into an average third baseman with power upside, though not intriguing enough to be a better option than Devers in 2019, or a good enough hitter in the short-term to make Moreland and Pearce uncomfortable.

One pedantic note for 2019: for the WAR graphic, I’m using FanGraphs’ depth chart playing time, not the playing time ZiPS spits out, so there will be occasional differences in WAR totals.

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

Disclaimer: ZiPS projections are computer-based projections of performance. Performances have not been allocated to predicted playing time in the majors — many of the players listed above are unlikely to play in the majors at all in 2019. ZiPS is projecting equivalent production — a .240 ZiPS projection may end up being .280 in AAA or .300 in AA, for example. Whether or not a player will play is one of many non-statistical factors one has to take into account when predicting the future.

Players are listed with their most recent teams, unless I have made a mistake. This is very possible, as a lot of minor-league signings go generally unreported in the offseason.

ZiPS’ projections are based on the American League having a 4.29 ERA and the National League having a 4.15 ERA.

Players who are expected to be out due to injury are still projected. More information is always better than less information, and a computer isn’t the tool that should project the injury status of, for example, a pitcher who has had Tommy John surgery.

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 which appear in 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.