The 2025 Red Sox are poised to break out

On the surface, this season looks exactly the same, but a closer look reveals everything’s changed.

The Red Sox find themselves in familiar territory this morning; right at .500 again.

For a team that finished last year 81-81 and has spent much of the last three seasons straddling the .500 mark, it feels like not much has changed. But when you look under the hood, something becomes abundantly clear: This is a very different team, specifically when it comes to how they’re getting their production.

Last year, 13 Red Sox players produced at least 1.0 WAR per baseball reference WAR (bWAR). Eight were position players:

Jarren Duran: 8.7

Rafael Devers: 3.7

Wilyer Abreu: 3.4

Ceddanne Rafaela: 2.8

Tyler O’Neill: 2.6

David Hamilton: 2.6

Connor Wong: 1.5

Masataka Yoshida: 1.4

Total = 26.7

And five were pitchers:

Tanner Houck: 3.5

Kutter Crawford: 1.9

Nick Pivetta: 1.7

Brayan Bello: 1.4

Kenley Jansen: 1.3

Total = 9.8

But here’s where it gets interesting. When you break down what the Sox are getting from those same 13 guys this year, it’s basically nothing due to a combination of injuries, offseason departures, and just general lack of production. Let’s break it down looking at the same guys, just with their 2025 WAR numbers. First, the position players:

Jarren Duran: 0.0 (He’s played in all but one game in 2025, but his OPS is also about 200 points lower than last year.)

Rafael Devers: 0.1 (Got off to a much publicized horrific start. He’s starting to recover some now, but he’s spent the last week and a half digging out of a negative hole.)

Wilyer Abreu: 1.3 (He’s been terrific! Their best player so far in 2025.)

Ceddanne Rafaela: 0.4 (He nets positive because his defense has once again been outstanding despite his .520 OPS.)

Tyler O’Neill: 0.0 (Left in free agency.)

David Hamilton: -0.1 (Got off to a horrible start. Had a slight bump last night with the home run to win the game.)

Connor Wong: -0.2 (Got off to a horrible start, and then got injured.)

Masataka Yoshida: 0.0 (Hasn’t played in a game yet.)

Total = 1.5

So out of the gate this season, the Red Sox have gotten a combined 1.5 WAR from the eight position players who gave them the bulk of last year’s production, and 1.3 of that has come from one guy in Wilyer Abreu. In other words, they’ve basically gotten nothing from everybody else.

And as for the top five pitchers from last year, it’s been even worse.

Tanner Houck: -0.8 (He had by some measuring sticks the worst start in Red Sox history on Monday. His Game Score was -10, almost good enough to win The Masters!)

Kutter Crawford: 0.0 (Hasn’t played in a game yet due to injury.)

Nick Pivetta: 0.0 (Left in free agency, but has been awesome for the Padres so far with a 1.57 ERA and 1.0 WAR in just four starts.)

Brayan Bello: 0.0 (Hasn’t played in a game yet due to injury.)

Kenley Jansen: 0.0 (Left in free agency)

Total = -0.8

So in 2025, the Red Sox are getting a negative WAR from the only five pitchers last year who produced at least 1.0 WAR each.

Add those 13 players together and you get 36.5 WAR from last year and 0.7 WAR so far this year. Granted, we’re only 12 percent of the way into the season, but even if you extrapolate it out, they’re only on pace to produce 5.7 WAR as a group in 2025. And again, all you have to do is strip out Wilyer Abreu, and the number flips to -0.6 WAR from the other 12 guys.

But here’s the key: Despite all of that, the 2025 Red Sox are still sitting at .500. This is a good thing! They’ve found a way to swap the production through a combination of offseason acquisitions, improvement from the farm, and injury recovery.

Let’s play a similar game again, but this time we’ll use the 2025 WAR numbers. Here, we’ll take the top 11 guys (instead of 13) because 11 guys have produced at least 0.3 WAR so far. Everybody else is at 0.1 or lower including a bunch of guys in negative territory.

The breakdown is six position players and five pitchers. Position players first:

Wilyer Abreu: 1.3

Alex Bregman: 0.9

Kristian Campbell: 0.6

Trevor Story: 0.5

Ceddanne Rafaela: 0.4

Romy Gonzalez: 0.3

And now, the brand new set of five most productive pitchers:

Garrett Crochet: 0.8

Aroldis Chapman: 0.5

Garrett Whitlock: 0.3

Greg Weissert: 0.3

Richard Fitts: 0.3

This is a transformation! A completely different engine powering this year’s club. And while some of it is obviously fool’s gold (Abreu isn’t this good, Weissert is a bullpen arm who will naturally fluctuate, Chapman will start blowing games soon, and Romy Gonzalez is a utility player), much of that production is standing on pretty solid ground.

This matters because there’s so many ways this team could easily get better almost immediately. Devers could get hot. Duran could regain even 50 percent of last year’s form. Tanner Houck could just be average instead of abysmal. Walker Buehler could get his ERA under 5.00. Brayan Bello, Lucas Giolito and Kutter Crawford could return from injury. And Roman Anthony and Marcelo Mayer could get called up and be great.

Not all of those things will happen, and that will probably keep them shy of a championship, but the Sox don’t need all of them to happen to break out of the .500 orbit they’ve been trapped in for years. They’ve established enough new pieces that a foundation seems to be solidifying. Now all they need to do is build on it.

If that happens, you may never have to see this image again.