By the time the Red Sox wrap up their series with the Washington Nationals on Sunday, the 2024 season will be one-quarter complete, with 40 of the 162 games played.
Here’s a look at the highs and lows of the Red Sox season to date:
Tyler O’Neill has made a big impact with the Red Sox. He leads the team in home runs, slugging percentage and OPS. He has, surprising, been a below average defender. Alex Gallardo/Associated Press
TOP POSITION PLAYER: Tyler O’Neill.
O’Neill was a wild card going into the season, acquired because he was 1) right-handed and 2) available for a low asking price. Durability has been a question for some time, but the Red Sox were betting on him being closer to the player he was in 2021, when he hit 34 homers, posted a .912 OPS, won a Gold Glove and finished eighth in NL MVP voting.
It’s too soon to know whether he can keep up this level of play for the entire season, but for now, he leads the team in homers, slugging and OPS and is tied for the team lead in runs scored. His OPS+ is an impressive 175. One surprise: he’s been slightly below average as a defender, with minus-2 in defensive runs saved.
Masataka Yoshida has not played since leaving a game on April 28, and was struggling before that. Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press
MOST DISAPPOINTING: Masataka Yoshida.
Yoshida’s been on the IL for more than a week and isn’t coming back for a while, but even when he was healthy, he wasn’t contributing much. In 24 games, he had just five extra-base hits (three doubles and two homers), and now that he’s exclusively a DH, the only value he provides is in the batter’s box. His .736 OPS is evidence that he wasn’t helping much, and his $18.6 million salary only highlights how little he’s contributed.
TOP ROOKIE: Wilyer Abreu.
Ten days into the season, this would have been unthinkable. Abreu, who struggled throughout spring training, was doing nothing in the early going except making mistakes in the outfield and striking out. A lot.
But Abreu has turned the corner, with a solid slash line of .276/.368/.439 to go with a team-leading eight doubles. But it’s in the outfield where Abreu has really sparkled, with five defensive runs saved already. In a remarkably short period of time, he’s mastered the art of playing right field in Fenway, which isn’t easy.
Kutter Crawford pitched well while the rest of the Red Sox’s starting rotation has dealt with injuries. He is 2-1 with a 1.75 ERA and is averaging nearly six innings per start. Mark Stockwell/Associated Press
TOP PITCHER: (tie) Tanner Houck, Kutter Crawford.
Injuries hit the Red Sox’ starting rotation hard, beginning with Lucas Giolito, followed in short order by Nick Pivetta, Garrett Whitlock and Brayan Bello. To date, only Pivetta has returned. It would have been easy for the rotation to nosedive, but the performances of Houck and Crawford have, improbably, helped the Red Sox compile the lowest ERA of any rotation in either league.
Crawford is 2-1 with a 1.75 and is averaging nearly six innings per start while Houck was 3-3 with a 1.99 and an absurd 1.4 walks per nine innings before his start on Friday. If both continue to pitch anywhere near this well, the concept of the Red Sox remaining in contention becomes more plausible.
BIGGEST SURPRISE: (tie): Justin Slaten, Cooper Criswell.
Together, these two pitchers had combined for 12 major league appearances before this year, all of them by Criswell. They were unknown commodities.
But Criswell has been terrific stepping into the rotation to fill the injury void, with a 2-0 mark and 1.47 ERA in four starts. That’s not much of a sample size, but his ability to hit spots and keep hitters off-balance is obvious. Slaten, meanwhile, was a Rule 5 pick and while he had a rough outing in Atlanta the other night, has flourished in relief, allowing just 13 hits in 20 innings while pitching to a 1.80 ERA. The fact that Manager Alex Cora and pitching coach Andrew Bailey haven’t hesitated to go to him in high leverage spots, showing their confidence in him.
Chris Martin has not been able to duplicate his success from a year ago. The Red Sox reliever has given up more runs than he did all of last season. Charles Krupa/Associated Press
BIGGEST CONCERN: Chris Martin.
Perhaps it wasn’t realistic that Martin could match last season, when he went months at a time without being scored upon. But the drop-off has been alarming in 2024. Martin has already given up more runs this year than last. The control is still elite and his strikeout rate has gone up, but there are other troubling numbers underneath the hood: hitters are hitting the ball much harder against him and putting the ball in the air more.
With John Schreiber gone and Josh Winckowski pressed into starter’s duty, the Sox need Martin as their dependable eighth-inning option.
THERE IS A LACK of clarity regarding Yoshida’s wrist/thumb injury, and it’s resulting in some uncertainty over what the Red Sox plan to do at DH – for the near future, and perhaps, the rest of the season.
Yoshida hasn’t appeared in a game since April 28 after being forced to leave a game against the Cubs in the sixth inning, the result of an awkward swing. Yoshida was placed on the IL soon after, but there’s been little in the way of detail when it comes to the actual injury, the recommended course of action and a timetable for his return.
Yoshida was set to visit with a specialist in Atlanta earlier this week, but even with that second opinion, it was reported that Yoshida could seek yet another consultation. It sure sounds as if surgery is on the table, one that could keep him sidelined for a long time, if not the entire season. If that’s true, the Red Sox have a significant hole at the DH spot.
Last November, Chief Baseball Officer Craig Breslow said his preference would be to rotate various players through the DH spot, allowing for more roster flexibility. Then, oddly, the Red Sox went to spring training with Yoshida as essentially an everyday DH. Before going on the IL, Yoshida had played in 24 games, yet spent one inning in the outfield – and that was in extra innings, when the Red Sox had otherwise run out of position players.
For a time, the Red Sox used the DH to ease some injured players – first O’Neill, then Rafael Devers – back into the lineup. Since Yoshida was placed on the IL, they’ve tried a handful of players there, including O’Neill (twice), Devers (once), Dominic Smith (three times) and Garrett Cooper (twice).
Ironically, this mix-and-match approach is closer to what the Red Sox intended to do with the DH role in the offseason. For now, it would seem the Red Sox could use the DH to provide at-bats for whichever player isn’t at first (Cooper or Smith) or one of their outfielders.
But that doesn’t offer much in the way of production. Almost a quarter of the way through the season, the Red Sox have gotten little in the way of offense from the DH.
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