The Red Sox look to be one of the top suitors for impact starting pitching. As teams laid the groundwork for the offseason at this week’s GM Meetings, chief baseball officer Craig Breslow suggested the Sox are evaluating ways to land a top-flight starter.
“We know we need to raise the ceiling of the rotation,” Breslow said (link via Alex Speier of the Boston Globe). “I think there are a lot of ways to do that, but we’re going to be really, really open-minded.”
The most straightforward solution is through free agency. Corbin Burnes and Blake Snell headline the rotation class. Max Fried and Jack Flaherty aren’t far behind. Nathan Eovaldi, Yusei Kikuchi and Sean Manaea all project as mid-rotation arms and should be available on shorter-term deals based on their ages. Eovaldi is probably looking at a two-year pact with a lofty annual value, while Manaea and Kikuchi should get three or four years.
Snell and Burnes are the unquestioned aces. Fried is a little more of a borderline ace but he’d slot into the top two spots in any rotation. Flaherty has flashed ace-caliber ability, albeit with less consistency. They’d all project as the #1 starter in Boston. The Red Sox have a group of quality mid-rotation starters but don’t have a true #1 arm.
Tanner Houck is the closest thing to an ace among the internal options. He’s coming off an excellent year, turning in a 3.12 ERA through 30 starts. Houck’s profile is built more around huge ground-ball numbers than swinging strikes. Brayan Bello and Kutter Crawford each took 30+ starts with earned run averages narrowly below 4.50. They fit into the middle of a rotation. So does Lucas Giolito, who’ll be back after missing all of 2024 due to elbow surgery. Giolito has performed like a #2 starter at his best, but home run issues led him to post an ERA approaching 5.00 in both 2022 and ’23.
The Sox are awaiting word from Nick Pivetta on whether he’ll return. Boston somewhat surprisingly tagged Pivetta with a $21.05MM qualifying offer. The right-hander has until November 19 to decide whether to accept. (Jon Heyman of the New York Post wrote yesterday that while Pivetta is weighing the QO, he has found a nice market in free agency’s opening days.) As with the rest of the Sox’s in-house options, he projects as more of a third or fourth starter. Pivetta has the strikeout and walk profile of a top-end arm, but he has been very susceptible to the longball over his career. He has been a…
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