Ignoring the fact the Red Sox don’t do guaranteed long-term free agents contracts anymore (they literally have not handed a deal to a free agent for more than two years guaranteed with no opt outs under Craig Breslow), I’d like to pause for a moment and pretend they’ll actually get serious.
Simple question: Who would you rather have on the 2025 Red Sox? Alex Bregman or Bo Bichette? Ignore the contract, ignore the commitment. Just a quick assessment of what version of the infield makes the 2025 Red Sox better.
The one thing I would like to take into consideration though is the flexibility of Marcelo Mayer’s glove. Given his strength on that side of the ball and Bichette’s free agent team finally admitting he’s actually a second baseman, both Bregman and Bichette would largely solve the problems in Boston’s infield.
If Bregman comes back, he plays third, Story’s at short, and Marcelo Mayer spends the majority of his time at second base. But if the Sox decide to make their biggest free agent splash of the decade and instead sign Bichette to play second, they could just as easily target Mayer at third base, where he looks to excel defensively. The more you think about it, the more Mayer becomes a large leverage piece in a world where the Sox are actually serious about using free agency to aggressively address the infield shortcomings.
This is also a key point because if the Ketal Marte rumors are true and Mayer was going to be in any such deal, then you’d still need to go out and get Bregman on top of trade for Marte to play second to fully fix the holes in the infield.
Anyway, let’s get back to the original question. Given what the infield would look like assuming Mayer would just cover the other open position, who would you rather have on the 2025 Boston Red Sox?
Since this is an open thread, we’ll toss the conversation to the community from here. Feel free to talk about this and whatever else you want, and as always, be good to one another.
