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With less than a month to go before pitchers and catchers report to spring training in Fort Myers, the Red Sox have yet to make moves to significantly improve their outlook for 2024.
While Boston has added eight outside players to its 40-man roster since the end of the season, only three (Lucas Giolito, Vaughn Grissom and Tyler O’Neill) project to have sizable roles.
With Chris Sale and Alex Verdugo gone via trade and Justin Turner, Adam Duvall and James Paxton still free agents, the Sox’ roster — at least on paper — is weaker than it was when the winter started.
Boston’s actions have fallen well short of the November proclamation by team chairman Tom Werner that the team planned to go “full throttle” in its attempts to build a contending roster for 2024 and with camp approaching, it seems the organization is trying to lower expectations a bit. Earlier this week, in an interview with MassLive’s Sean McAdam, Werner backed down from his “full throttle” claim.
And on Thursday’s Fenway Rundown podcast, chief baseball officer Craig Breslow outlined a more measured approach for the end of the winter.
Like he did in a recent conversation with The Boston Globe’s Pete Abraham, Breslow said that instead of patching holes with big outside moves, the organization believes that tangible progress will come, first and foremost, with the continued development of young, internal options.
He repeatedly pointed to a young core of position players that includes pieces like Rafael Devers, Jarren Duran, Ceddanne Rafaela, Wilyer Abreu, Connor Wong and top prospects Marcelo Mayer, Roman Anthony and Kyle Teel.
Developing a pitching pipeline is another goal — and one the organization has largely failed to accomplish for the last decade.
Much like his predecessor, Chaim Bloom, Breslow said that the Red Sox are keeping one eye focused on the future, which eliminates some moves that would push the team closer to contention in 2024.
Reading between the lines, it seems as though Breslow’s internal audit of the organization revealed he doesn’t believe the team is close enough to a championship window to go all-in at this stage.
“It’s clear the model that has been successful here for a really long time is the combination of homegrown talent with external impact additions,” Breslow said on the podcast. “I would hate to think that in some way, there’s a perception that the last two months are indicative or predictive of how we intend to operate going forward.
Certainly, there’s going to be a time where it makes sense to add external players from via free agency or trade that are impact players and we’re going to pay a premium for them. That’s how World Series contenders are born and that is very much the plan here.