The Red Sox made their needed addition to the upper half of the rotation with this morning’s Sonny Gray trade. The veteran righty slots between Garrett Crochet and Brayan Bello in an impressive top three. The Sox have a handful of talented younger arms (e.g. Payton Tolle, Connelly Early, Kyle Harrison, Tyler Uberstine) who can compete with injury returnees Kutter Crawford and Patrick Sandoval at the back of the rotation.
That appears to free up the Sox to focus their attention on adding an impact hitter. Chris Cotillo of MassLive and Jen McCaffrey of The Athletic each write that while further starting pitching adds are possible, the Red Sox are now likely to prioritize bringing in a power bat. Chief baseball officer Craig Breslow left the door open to making another significant rotation move but reiterated the Sox’s interest in bolstering the lineup.
“We had been pretty transparent about our desire to add to the rotation and our desire to add a bat on the position player side,” Breslow told reporters this evening. “It’s impossible to know exactly what the order of operations will be. So we’ll continue to look for opportunities to improve the team, but I wouldn’t say we’re going to exclusively focus on one thing at the expense of the other. … And so I don’t think this is a close off all opportunities and look exclusively at position players, but I also think that there’s a chance that that comes into focus now over the next couple of weeks.”
The Sox aren’t expected to be players for Kyle Tucker given their stockpile of left-handed hitting outfielders. They’ve been either directly tied to or listed as speculative fits for essentially all the other top free agent bats. Bo Bichette, Pete Alonso, Munetaka Murakami and Kyle Schwarber are all possibilities, as is a reunion with Alex Bregman.
Boston has just over $154MM in guaranteed commitments for next season. Arbitration salaries for Crawford, Tanner Houck, Triston Casas and Romy Gonzalez should add another $10-12MM. They’d spend another $10MM or so to round out the roster with minimum salary players. The Sox opened the 2025 campaign with a payroll in the $194MM range, so they should have around $20MM before matching this year’s spending level. They’re around $223MM in luxury tax obligations, according to RosterResource. That puts them approximately $21MM below the base threshold. The Red Sox typically spend around the CBT line and have gone beyond it in the past, so there should be room for another significant addition.
The corner infield is the obvious place to add a bat. Casas is coming off a significant knee injury and shouldn’t enter camp as the clear starting first baseman. Marcelo Mayer could play third base if the Red Sox don’t re-sign Bregman or add one of Murakami or Eugenio Suárez at the hot corner. The Sox could slide Mayer over to second if they make a bigger acquisition at third.
