There are a few candidates for the role in 2025 but they all have concerns.
After an offseason of talk mostly centered around starting pitching and a right-handed bat of some sort, the third item on my wish list was finding a closer. There was a big pile of them. Nothing too flashy, but a whole lot of useful pieces who have led their team in saves in recent years: Tanner Scott, Kirby Yates, Jeff Hoffman, Carlos Estevez, Kenley Jansen, Jordan Romano, David Robertson, and Paul Sewald. Clay Holmes went and got starter money with the Mets but the rest was kind of a “take whatever’s still there” and add them to the group that’s already in Boston.
The group that is already here is solid. A few of them have experience closing, and some in the biggest of moments. If you look at Roster Resource, there’s a “CL” next to two names: Aroldis Chapman and Liam Hendriks, so let’s start there. One of those pitchers has 335 saves and the other has 116. As recently as 2021, both of them had 30+ saves in the same season. Hendriks followed that up with a 38-save season in 2022.
What we’re terrified of, though, is the situation where this all goes wrong.
Chapman will enter the season at 37-years-old, a year older than Hendriks. He has finished in the bottom 2 percentile in BB% in each of the past three seasons, which includes a bottom 1 percentile in 2024. He has also finished in the top 2 percentile in K% in each of the past three seasons. It’s difficult to use the predictive “K-BB%” metric when it’s that extreme for both categories. You hope that he strikes out more batters than he walks by the time the inning ends, but if he doesn’t, the Sox will be facing true blow-up potential. If that happens in the ninth inning, you’ve probably used all of your high-leverage pitchers by that time and there isn’t anyone left to “bail him out” (no pun intended with Chapman).
In addition to the issues Chapman has had with the law, which have been chronicled plenty on this website, he’s also just been a flat-out bad teammate at times. In 2022, he skipped a workout heading into the postseason with the Yankees and was left off the playoff roster. He also wears long sleeves while pitching in the middle of summer, a serious red flag.
With a fastball that averaged 99 mph in 2023, 98 in 2024, and somehow topped out at 105.1 mph on a single pitch last year, he still has plenty left in the tank. Even with the 335 career saves though, he hasn’t been in that role as often in recent years. Chapman had 9, 6, and 14 saves, respectively, in the past three years, and his second-half closer run was in place of an oft-injured and ineffective David Bednar on a Pirates team that was out of the race.
With Hendriks, the anticipation in signing him before the 2024 season was that he would be back in the final month or two of the season to setup for Kenley Jansen, and then take over the role in 2025. Unfortunately, he was not able to show that he was healthy, suffering a setback in September of last year, and has now missed two full seasons, save for five innings pitched at the start of 2023. Those five innings were thrown after returning from non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and prior to the Tommy John diagnosis.
Hendriks has been through a ton in the past two seasons and if he can return to the form of 2022, it will be one of the great stories in all of baseball this year. The last two full seasons that the man pitched he had a combined 2.66 ERA, an 0.87 WHIP, and a 34.9 K-BB% (second in MLB in ’21-’22 behind only Jacob deGrom). However, he is 36-years-old, and pinning the full-time closer role on him entering the season is a lot to ask, so the risk here can be summarized in one word: health.
Speaking of health, Garrett Whitlock is back in 2025, so let’s hope that he lasts in his reprised relief role. After Tommy John surgery in 2019, Whitlock’s professional career has been extremely rocky. He missed 53 days in 2022 with hip inflammation, a combined 84 days in 2023 for a recovery from hip surgery and then elbow neuritis, and then started 2024 with an oblique injury which led to the internal brace version of Tommy John to end his season after 18 innings.
Understandably, the team has committed to utilizing Whitlock out of the bullpen and even though he’s never been a “closer” (nine career saves), he was the team’s choice to finish off games in the 2021 playoffs. Whitlock has a career 2.65 ERA out of the pen, compared to his 4.29 ERA as a starter and, if healthy, will be a big part of this 2025 team. Unfortunately, “if healthy” is pulling a lot of the weight here.
There is a scenario where Justin Slaten spends the 2025 season showing us that he is, in fact, the closer of the future. Slaten is 27-years-old and walked just 4% of batters in 2024, which is a giant check mark in his favor. He has a 107 Stuff+ and 113 Pitching+ number on Eno Sarris’s leaderboard, with three pitches, the fastball, slider, and cutter, grading out well above average. But it’s easy to forget that Slaten himself was put on the IL in July of last year with elbow inflammation and was there for six weeks. Upon return, his Swinging Strike % dropped from 14.7% before the injury to 12.3% after the injury. Until someone has handled the pressure of the closer role, we just don’t know what to expect, and part of that story will be if Slaten can stay healthy for the full season.
The Red Sox have stockpiled arms with quantity in the past calendar year. On the 40-man roster, they have Hendriks, Chapman, Slaten, Whitlock, Josh Winckowski, Zack Kelly, Chris Murphy, Brennan Bernardino, Greg Weissert, Quinn Priester, Luis Guerrero, Zack Penrod, and Justin Wilson. They have non-roster invitees Austin Adams, Adam Ottavino, Michael Fulmer, Bryan Mata, Isaiah Campbell, Matt Moore, Wyatt Mills, and Sean Newcomb who can be moved on to the 40 at any time. This will all be a positive in terms of roster flexibility and innings six through eight on any given night, and the bullpen is the easiest area to add to around the trade deadline if things go wrong. However, the man getting the ball in the ninth inning is still in flux and will depend on health and the ability to handle pressure. A lot of questions still exist in that area of the Red Sox squad as we kick off spring training games.