The Red Sox clearly weren’t couldn’t hit enough this year and the Yankees exposed that in glaring fashion in the postsesson.
Boston added a real bat last offseason in Willson Contreras – who produced an All-Star season and did homer to produce one of just the two runs the Red Sox scored in the Wild Card series. Contreras alone clearly wasn’t enough, especially after the spaced-out departures of Rafael Devers and Alex Bregman from last year’s team.
Caleb Durbin had a nice summer improvement. Ceddanne Rafaela and Wilyer Abreu each get ridiculously hot for a few weeks. The potential still remains in Roman Anthony despite a frustrating injury finish to the season. But as a sum of the parts, the Red Sox took a massive step back offensively in 2026.
They scored just two runs in the series. They’ve scored just 11 in eight postseason games dating back to Game 4 of the 2021 ALCS (more of a historical trend than current lineup analysis but you get the point). Most notably in a trend I’ve followed for awhile, Boston finished outside of the top-10 in team OPS for the first time since 2017. Clearly, there’s a lack of slug and lack of clutch production among the group.
To me, two real problems stand out when I consider the lack of production in the postseason:
I totally agree that historically the Red Sox operate best with a full-time DH with power – though Craig Breslow and his theory of versatility disagrees. And for as important as Rafaela and Abreu have been with their gloves and regular-season production, Boston needs them to step up in October to have any chance of real advancement in the coming years.
So, how do you fix it? Because that’s the hard part. Boston can use right-handed power, but where can the difference really be made?
The Red Sox really don’t pay for free-agent bats anymore (a year of Bregman does not qualify to me). Even if that approach changes, the headlining names in an underwhelming class this offseason are Randy Arozarena and Seiya Suzuki.
Could this be the lineup whenever the Red Sox next take the field?
- Roman Anthony, LF
- Adley Rutschman, C
- Randy Arozarena, DH
- Willson Contreras, 1B
- Wilyer Abreu, RF
- Ceddanne Rafaela, CF
- Caleb Durbin, 3B
- Curtis Mead, 2B
- Franklin Arias, SS
It seems like this could finally be the offseason where the team and Jarren Duran go in different directions for a fresh start on both sides. Is Trevor Story on the roster come next year – or whenever the sport commences a season again? Whatever the scenario is, outside of DH, the Red Sox don’t have a position that’s open to fill when pursuing offensive additions. They’re ultimately going to need to make hard decisions about players already on the roster to move on from and identify real talent that can produce when it matters. And likely turn to another daring trade. Because ultimately that’s what the need for improvement comes down to. The Red Sox did enough to qualify for the postseason in consecutive years – the first time they did so since 2016 through 2018. That can’t be good enough on its own anymore after two disappointing exits.
The lineup will be the central point of roster construction this winter. What’s your confidence level the Red Sox are ready to go to war offensively next time baseball resumes?
