MLB Notebook: Could the Red Sox also lose the AL East race in the offseason?

In 2023, four teams posted winning records and three qualified for the postseason. The division champion Baltimore Orioles finished second in all of baseball. Overall, the unit posted a game-high .554 winning percentage. And, as the Boston Globe’s Alex Speier points out , the East has a .652 winning percentage outside of the division. Think about this. The distribution was so good that the East won two-thirds of the times it faced the other 25 teams in the game.

Just like a year ago. There are four championship teams and three playoff contenders. There’s no debating it: The AL East is the toughest, most talented and most competitive of MLB’s six clubs. And that doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon. The scoring season won’t begin until after the first year, but when it does, as many as three teams — Baltimore, Tampa Bay and Boston — are believed to be in the upper half of their player development systems. Top 10.

The pipeline of young talent across the business will continue. “It won’t be easy,” admitted an AL official in the air combat department.

And now the competition doesn’t stop in the offseason. It looks like an extended regular season that many teams would like to say goodbye to in 2024 and beyond.

Generational talent Juan Soto has joined the division, at least for next season. The Yankees are unlikely to give up some of San Diego’s prospects without being fully prepared to sign him to an extension beyond 2024.

Next, Shohei Ohtani wants to narrow down potential destinations to a few, with Toronto still in the mix. There’s no guarantee Ohtani will sign with the Blue Jays, but making it this far in the Ohtani sweepstakes remains a commitment from the team.

If you’re the Orioles, Rays or Red Sox, imagine Ohtani and Soto meeting 26 times next season. Good luck to the pitchers.

Tampa Bay and Baltimore don’t have the resources to compete with top free agents. But Baltimore has used several feeder seasons to capitalize on the game’s best farm system, giving them a tsunami of top prospects to fill out their roster in the years to come, or alternatively, plenty of trade chips. Meanwhile, Tampa Bay remains a master of efficiency, deftly building a playoff-caliber team that can take on strong rivals by dumpster diving to develop and remove players. So where do the Red Sox go?

The Sox seem to be in a desperate situation right now. They’re spending enough money to occupy a third of the salary cap, but they don’t seem willing to do anything for the game’s best free agent. Let’s see: Since the end of the 2018 season, the Red Sox have only offered a nine-figure contract to a free agent (Trevor Story).

During that same period, the Yankees made Aaron Judge the highest-paid player in the game and Gerrit Cole the third-highest-paid pitcher. If they can extend Soto for the next 12 months, it will be higher than Judge’s.

If the Blue Jays win the Ohtani sweepstakes, they will become the highest paid players in the history of the game. Boston’s minor league system has gradually improved over the past five years, and assuming it doesn’t involve yet another sacrifice, the organization could land three top-30 prospects (Marcelo Mayer, Roman Anthony and Kyle Thiel) after Year 1. It exists. It needs to be done to ensure a much needed starting chain in the coming weeks.

But the Red Sox system is not yet on par with Baltimore or Tampa Bay. There was a time not too long ago when the Red Sox were considered a legitimate threat for every star player on the market, including Manny Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Carl Crawford, David Price and Chris Sale.

Some have been successfully acquired. Some don’t. Some escaped their clutches. But the Red Sox were a factor for other clubs to consider.

It’s been quite some time since that happened. Multiple reports have suggested that the Sox are among the teams pursuing Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and if true, Craig Breslow flatly refused to confirm or deny the Red Sox’s interest. This is a sign that the Red Sox could be back in the hunt for their star. Years of cuts that saw them finished the last four seasons ended with grace.

Even when the team has stumbled in the past, it was the result of poor judgment. Resources were allocated to the wrong player. They gave guys like Crawford and Price huge contracts that Boston couldn’t afford. But at least these mistakes have been forgiven. After all, at least they tried.

Lately, that will seems to be lacking, and the fan base is becoming increasingly hostile and restless. In the end, it depends on the result. Are the Red Sox serious enough to improve their roster, become a legitimate contender again, and make good on President Tom Werner’s promise of a “top-speed” short-term approach?

Otherwise, the Red Sox risk not only becoming more inadequate, but also causing further outrage after finishing the season in last place with an equally humiliating offseason slump. Earlier this week, the Red Sox hired Justin Willard as director of pitching. He will work in Boston, providing macro-level oversight of the organization’s pitchers and working with Breslow and pitching coach Andrew Bailey to introduce them to the major league staff and minor league system. Willard held the title of minor league pitching coordinator with the Minnesota Twins and helped oversee the development of several pitching prospects who found their way to the parent club, including 12th round pick Bailey Ober (13-12 , 3.63 in three years). , Louis Varland, advanced to the major leagues three years after being drafted in the 15th round out of a Division 2 school and has made 15 starts over the last two seasons.

Massachusetts sports betting apps are available and legal for online betting. Subscribe to MA’s best sportsbook. Bet on FanDuel Massachusetts, DraftKings Massachusetts and Caesars Sportsbook Massachusetts. “Justin is great.” said Derek Falvey, President of Baseball Operations for the Twins. “He’s really humble and has a steady, quiet presence in the game room. But when he talks, processes the information he has, and makes a plan, you can usually tell he’s well thought out. I think he’s been a coach, he’s been on the field, he’s had experience, he’s worked in our front office, he’s helped in acquisition conversations.

Willard’s role was different for the Red Sox and Twins as he primarily pitched in Minnesota’s minor league system. However, he worked very closely with the Minnesota coaches and coordinators to deal with the challenges he faced when entering a major league pitching program with the Red Sox.

“He’s seen the transition from the minors to the majors and he’s been around big-league players, so he’s been able to adjust and be around our big-league environment,” Falvey said. As I understand Craig’s role in Boston, I know he will be involved with both the majors and minor leagues. He’s been on our major league staff a few times, so there’s never been a minor league coordinator who hasn’t spent time with major league pitchers. “From what I know about (Andrew) Bailey and that group, I think there’s going to be a lot of synergy there.”

The Red Sox were able to hire Willard from the Twins because it meant a promotion from minor league pitching coordinator to director of pitching, overseeing the major league pitching program. The latter is not part of Willard’s job description in Minnesota. Willard Breslow will fill essentially the same role he had when he started with the Cubs.

Two years ago, the Baltimore Orioles recorded 110 losses and continued their triple-digit hitting streak for three consecutive seasons. The number of participants was less than 1 million and there was little interest in the team.

But the 2022 team finished at .500, and last year the Orioles won the division for the first time since 2014. At a GM meeting a month ago, GM Mike Elias expressed hope that O’s rotation on the field would make the team a potential free agent destination. The Orioles have yet to sign major contracts (several teams have), but are showing more interest in players who choose Baltimore. Elijah Brandon Haidon (manager) said: “It is indeed invigorating. –

Finally, Elijah is partially related to the decision to push the left wall of the team, which is to help Homer push and help the intense environment.

“We do not go to the ribs to buy a free agent, because we can get back the walls. We get better dollars on the market. -This is the first of the franchise. “Historically, it’s been difficult to recruit pitchers. That often includes overpaying or waiting until guys get off work during spring training. I really felt like I was riding a sled. It’s definitely a very nice and fun clubhouse atmosphere. Everything is positive. So when it comes to intangible assets, I think we have a lot of them. Now we actually compete on a contract basis, which is still very competitive and not easy. But I think we have a very compelling direction for baseball, and it’s a good direction that we have.

extra innings

1) Rule 5 It is best not to overreact to what is happening in the project. Last year, the Red Sox were shocked when they lost three players to the major league portion of the Twitter Draft. Two of them (Noah Song and Andrew Politi) ended up getting sent back to the Red Sox, so there were no fouls. The other was Thad Ward’s 6.37 ERA and 1.613 WHIP in Washington. This year, the Red Sox lost two players from their major league team and another seven from their minor league team. They have lost the most players of any franchise with a total of 9. It remains to be seen what happens with recruiting, but at least it shows that the talent base of the organization has improved. “It’s a result of player depth that other organizations feel they need,” Breslow said. “We will raise the replacement level (talent)”

2) There is no question that Alex Verdugo has underperformed during his time with the Red Sox. It seems almost impossible that he didn’t hit 14 home runs in a season at Fenway Park, and his efforts can be questioned at times. But as Keith Lowe said in The Athletic, to say that Verdugo is little more than a plutonist seems like an extreme understatement. While Verdugo was a very average hitter at times (career OPS: 105, which is 5% better than average), he was a solid middle hitter, at least for the time he played against them . One of the toughest positions in the game (right field at Fenway). This player doesn’t look like a part-timer, though his splits (.655 OPS vs. LHP) suggest shortcomings. 3) Could it be that Padres GM AJ Preller had to do it again and not sign Xander Bogaerts last season? Not only did Bogart have a disappointing season in his first year in San Diego, but the size of his contract ($280 million) was another factor that made extending Soto virtually impossible, leading to Wednesday’s trade . Yankees. . The Padres can now opt out of the option to acquire Soto from the Nationals, leaving Soto and Bogertz for 10 more seasons and acquiring Fernando Tatis Jr. In short, maybe Soto could have kept it that way. .