The Red Sox lost Nate Eovaldi, Rich Hill and Michael Wacha this offseason. Consequently, they needed a significant rotation overhaul and upgrade this offseason, but failed to do it. The Sox don’t currently look like a team with legitimate postseason aspirations this year.
The Red Sox rotation will almost certainly run into an innings problem this season. Chris Sale and James Paxton have hardly pitched in the past three years and will likely struggle to handle a starter’s workload for a full season.
Sale has appeared in just 11 games, tossing 48 1/3 total innings, over the past three seasons. Fellow lefty Paxton has only logged a total of 21 2/3 innings over the past three seasons. The optimistic view is that both pitchers have low-mileage arms. Yet, if the Sox can get about 20-25 starts out of each of them, that would have to be viewed as a success.
Corey Kluber will be 37 in April and has faced numerous injuries in recent years that have really limited his availability. Just look at his innings totals:
2019 - 35.2
2020 - 1.0
2021 - 80
2022 - 164
Total = 280.2 over four seasons
The team is going to need more arms and innings.
Yet, Brayan Bello threw just 57.1 innings in the bigs last season, and his professional high was 117.2 innings in A-ball back in 2019. Who knows what to expect from him, but that may be his ceiling. Bello also went 2-8, with a 4.71 ERA and 1.78 WHIP, though he did get much better over his final starts.
Nick Pivetta is the club’s workhorse, having thrown 155 and 179.2 innings over the past two years. However, he posted an ERA above 4.50 in each of them and has a career 5.02 ERA. That’s fifth-starter material.
What will the Sox do with Garrett Whitlock? The club says they plan to use him as a starter. However, in nine career starts, Whitlock has a 4.15 ERA. Yet, in 68 games as a reliever, he has 2.24 ERA. His presence in the bullpen would greatly strengthen the relief core, especially now that they’ll be without both Matt Barnes and Josh Taylor. Both of those subtractions may be detrimental this season.
Last season, the Red Sox bullpen posted the fifth-worst ERA in baseball (4.59) and was 39-for-67 (58.2%) in save opportunities. Whitlock would help, a lot.
The only other surefire relievers returning from last season are John Schreiber and Tanner Houck, who had back surgery last year. Houck was 8-for-9 in save opportunities in 2022.
This offseason, the Sox added free agent relievers Kenley Jansen (two years, $32M), Joely Rodríguez (1 year, $2 million) and Chris Martin (2 years, $17.5 million). They also traded Josh Taylor, DFA’d Darwinzon Hernandez and lost Matt Strahm to free agency.
Chaim Bloom tells us that the farm system will continually feed this team and return it to a World Series competitor. Take a look a what these young pitchers did last year. It’s not encouraging.
Kutter Crawford - 12 starts/21 games, 3-6, 5.47 ERA, 1.42 WHIP, 77.1 IN, 77 K
Josh Winckowski - 14 starts/15 games, 5-7, 5.89 ERA, 1.59 WHIP, 70.1 IN, 44 K
All these other pitchers on the 40-man roster have little or no major league experience.
Meanwhile, the Sox lost a combination of reliability in Hill, and competency in Wacha and Eovaldi.
Rich Hill - 26 starts, 8-7, 4.27 ERA, 1.30 WHIP, 124.1 IN, 109 K
Michael Wacha - 23 starts, 11-2, 3.32 ERA, 1.12 WHIP, 127.1 IN, 104 K
Nathan Eovaldi - 19 starts, 5-3, 4.05 ERA, 1.26 WHIP, 104.1 IN, 99 K
Taking a big picture view, it’s hard to be optimistic about the starting rotation, or the depth guys that the Sox will surely rely on this season.
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