A brand new pitching staff is on the horizon for 2025! (Warning: Some assembly may be required.)
When it comes to acquiring pitching, the Red Sox clearly have a type: Guys with intriguing upside who have something wrong with them. While this kink has been brewing for a while, it’s never been more apparent than it’s become in the last couple of months.
Here’s a list of what I believe are the most significant transactions involving pitchers who either are, or have been on the 40-man roster over the last 60 days. Of course, there has been other trimming around the edges—moves like trading Enmanuel Valdez for minor leaguer Joe Vogatsky, and shipping out Cam Booser to Chicago to make room on the 40-man roster—but I’d argue the nine guys below are the most significant transactions in shaping the current and future Red Sox roster:
October 31st: Lucas Giolito exercises his $19 million player option, as expected.
November 14th: Justin Wilson is signed to a one-year, $2.25 million contract.
November 19th: Minor League starting pitcher Hunter Dobbins has his contract selected to protect him from the Rule 5 draft and is added to the 40-man roster.
Late November: Both Bryan Mata and Isaiah Campbell are designated for assignment and non-tendered to make room on the 40-man roster. However, both are immediately brought back into the organization and are signed to minor league contracts within days.
December 3rd: Aroldis Chapman is signed to a one-year, $10.75 million contract.
December 11th: The Red Sox trade for Garrett Crochet (dealing away Kyle Teel, Chase Meidroth, Braden Montgomery, and Wikelman Gonzalez).
December 20th: Patrick Sandoval is signed to a two-year, $18.25 million contract.
December 23rd: Walker Buehler is signed to a one-year, $21.05 million contract.
Do you see what’s happening here? Most of these guys do have very intriguing upside, but every single one of them is devalued in one way or another. Let’s run through each of them:
Lucas Giolito, a former first round pick who received Cy Young votes in 2019, 2020, and 2021, got the internal brace repair procedure (let’s call it mini Tommy John) to the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow last March. He hopes to come back in 2025. Prior to that, the Red Sox signed him coming off one of the worst seasons of his career in 2023.
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Justin Wilson underwent Tommy John surgery at the start of 2022, and has since suffered a latissimus dorsi strain, which ensured he didn’t come back in 2023. The 37-year-old spent last year in the Reds bullpen with 5.59 ERA and is hoping for a bounce back in 2025.
Hunter Dobbins is a nice organizational story who was actually pretty healthy in 2024. He was drafted in the eighth round by the Sox back in 2021, and has now worked his way up to the 40-man roster. Why did he last until the eighth round of that draft? Because he underwent Tommy John surgery before the Red Sox drafted him. (He also missed a month in early 2023 battling vertigo.)
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Bryan Mata pitched in games at four different levels in the minor leagues in 2024, and still only managed to amass a grand total of 22.2 innings on the mound. He spent the first half of the season battling a hamstring injury and missed the second half due to shoulder and elbow soreness. The Red Sox couldn’t justify keeping him on the 40-man roster, but of course they quickly brought him back into the organization on a minor league contract.
Isaiah Campbell was a disaster in his eight relief appearances with the Sox last year. He gave up 12 earned runs in 6.2 innings, which was good for a 16.20 ERA. So why is he coming back on a minor league deal? Because he spent most of 2024 battling right shoulder inflammation and then a right elbow injury. The Sox are betting that the guy who posted a 2.83 ERA in Seattle in 2023 is still in there somewhere.
Aroldis Campman doesn’t have any injury concerns, which is funny because he throws harder than anybody who’s ever donned a Sox uniform. What he does have is serious issues finding the plate (as indicated by his 6.0 BB/9 over the last four years). He’s also devalued by his domestic violence incident from last decade. In other words, he was cheaper than he otherwise would have been given his talent, so of course the Red Sox scooped him up.
As Lou Merloni would tell you, Garrett Crochet is a pig, and the trade to get him was the gutsiest move the Sox have made in years. But still, he doesn’t escape the theme of the offseason. In fact, he might be the best example of it.
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Crochet is also coming off Tommy John surgery, which he had in April of 2022. As a result, he’s only pitched more than five innings in a game 12 times in his entire major league career! (Yes, you read the right.) Is the upside tantalizing? Absolutely! Is he on the verge of becoming an ace? Probably. Has he ever proven he can be an ace at the major league level, particularly in a raucous environment? Nope! Once again, the Sox weren’t willing to go out and pay for the real, proven thing, and instead went for the guy who could become elite if things break right.
Patrick Sandoval won’t be pitching for the Sox anytime soon. Can you guess why? He tore his UCL last June and then had the same internal brace procedure Lucas Giolito had. For refence, Sandoval is on the Liam Hendriks plan, who is worth mentioning here because even though he wasn’t signed this winter, was also signed to a two year deal with all the potential production weighted on the back end. Since Hendricks was signed last offseason, he’s likely to come back this spring, meaning Hendricks will be another guy on the 2025 roster with extremely high upside (2.32 ERA and 13.4 K/9 out of the bullpen when he has pitched since 2019), but is coming off a major injury and may or may not ever be the same pitcher again.
Lastly, we have Walker Buehler, who unlike many of the other guys on this list didn’t need to have a Tommy John surgery to fix his throwing elbow. Instead, he’s had two Tommy John surgeries to fix the UCL in his throwing elbow. The first in 2015 when he was in the minors, and the second in August of 2022, when he also had his flexor tendon repaired. But again, the upside is high. Buehler finished fourth in Cy Young voting in 2021 before the second Tommy John, has a career 3.04 ERA in the postseason (which includes striking out Alex Verdugo to end the 2024 World Series in humiliating fashion for the Yankees), and will be an extremely motivated man on a one-year deal, which could land him a massive payday next winter if he returns to form this summer.
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What a potent batch of ingredients! In a staunch refusal to spend top dollar on the most expensive free agent pitchers on the market and instead electing to fully embrace the high risk, high reward options, the Red Sox have created the most volatile pitching staff in all baseball. Perhaps one of the most volatile pitching staffs of all time.
You don’t have to squint very hard to see how this group of arms could turn into an unstoppable juggernaut by the end of the year. But in classic Red Sox fashion, you also don’t have to squint very hard to see how this could turn into an absolute catastrophe. Or, given the length and quirkiness of each baseball season, both at different times of the year.
The architects of this team could very easily look like complete geniuses or absolute idiots in a matter of months, and no result, no matter how strange, should shock you given the cast of characters they’ve assembled.
For one last quick overview, here’s ten guys who as of right now will be fighting to start games for the Sox at some point in 2025 (and winter’s not even over yet).
Garrett Crochet
Tanner Houck
Walker Buehler
Brayan Bello
Lucas Giolito
Kutter Crawford
Richard Fitts
Quinn Priester
Cooper Criswell
Hunter Dobbins
Almost all of them could be from baseball’s Island of Misfit Toys for one reason or another. None of them are particularly reliable thanks to either injury history, inconsistency on the mound, or lack of major league experience, but there also might be enough there where the five best names from that group at any given moment put you in the World Series conversation.
I’m not sure I’ve ever looked at a Sox pitching staff with so much excitement and dread all at the same time. What a weird and wild winter!