Errors and strikeouts. If you’re a Red Sox fan you’re probably sick of seeing both of those things. The 2025 Red Sox led all of baseball in errors last year, after committing the second-most errors in 2024 and the fourth-most in 2023.
The strikeout numbers don’t look much better, as Red Sox hitters finished with the eighth-most strikeouts in the baseball last year and the third-most in 2024.
Errors and strikeouts are the two principal reasons why I was lukewarm on Eugenio Suarez, the third baseman who just signed a one-year, $15 million deal with the Cincinnati Reds. Suarez’s 17 errors were the eighth-most in baseball last year, while his 196 Ks were the fourth-most. He would have made the Red Sox worse in two areas where they are already pretty poor.
But here’s the flip side: it’s also quite possible that he would have hit so many home runs over the monster that walking down Lansdowne Street would be considered a health hazard:
The 2025 Red Sox finished just 15th in home runs and adding power was explicitly stated as one of Craig Breslow’s goals coming into the offseason. Suffice it to say, he hasn’t really done that yet. Rafael Devers and Alex Bregman are gone. Willson Contreras is here, but his career high in homers is just 24, and he hit those before the pandemic. Roman Anthony will play a full season in 2026 (like he should have last year…) but the home run power seems to be lagging just a bit behind the rest of his outstanding all-around game. So if the Red Sox are going to hit more home runs they did last year, they’ll probably need that extra power to come from Tristan Casas, who likely won’t even be healthy to start the season and still has yet to establish himself as a reliable power bat.
So for as much as I don’t want to see more errors ands strikeouts in the Red Sox lineup, it’s really hard for me stomach the Sox not matching the Reds on a one-year deal for a guy who might hit twice as many homers as anyone else in the Sox lineup.
Did the Sox mess this up? Let us know what you think in the comments.
