It’s hard not to look at Xander Bogaerts and feel a sense of yearning.
The former Red Sox shortstop has gotten off to an awesome start in San Diego. Through the season’s first month he ranks among MLB’s top all-around players, entering the weekend with a .316 average, five home runs, a .919 OPS and 1.5 wins above replacement, which ranked tied for fourth in baseball among all position players.
Bogaerts has all but carried the Padres during an otherwise disappointing start. Meanwhile, the Red Sox’ first, second and third options at shortstop are all on the injured list, and Kiké Hernández is currently bouncing around trying to help plug other holes as they pop up.
What a difference Bogaerts would make in Boston right now.
Seeing Bogaerts thrive from afar stings, but truth be told we won’t really know whether the Red Sox or Padres made the right decision until he’s deeper into his 11-year, $280 million deal. Things could look a lot different if Trevor Story and Adalberto Mondesi get healthy and make an impact, if top prospect Marcelo Mayer develops into a perennial All-Star or if Bogaerts enters a prolonged decline in his mid-30s.
For now we’ll have to wait and see, but with many of Boston’s other recent moves we can draw a few more conclusions.
The Red Sox have moved on from nearly two dozen big league contributors since last summer’s trade deadline, and outside of the four-time All-Star there aren’t any obvious players the club wishes they had back.
Whether their replacements are up to the task is another discussion, but here’s a look at how Boston’s recent castoffs have fared since leaving the Red Sox.
Free agent departures: In addition to Bogaerts, the Red Sox had six other free agents hit the market this past offseason and didn’t wind up re-signing any of them.
Rich Hill has been a serviceable back-of-the-rotation starter and a great veteran presence for Pittsburgh, going 2-2 with a 4.50 ERA through his first five starts, but Nathan Eovaldi and Michael Wacha haven’t been as good. Through five starts Eovaldi has a 5.20 ERA with Texas and Wacha a 6.75 ERA with San Diego.
J.D. Martinez has been solid in Los Angeles, batting .250 with four home runs, 15 RBI and an .840 OPS, but was just placed on the injured list with back soreness. Justin Turner, his replacement in Boston, is batting .273 with two home runs, nine RBI and a .760 OPS, not quite as good but good enough where there shouldn’t be many complaints.
Tommy Pham hasn’t done much with the New York Mets, he’s batting .196 with two home runs and seven RBI. The Red Sox have gotten more production from four of their outfielders, five if you count Hernández.
The most interesting recent Red Sox departure is lefty Matt Strahm, who has moved from the bullpen to the starting rotation for the shorthanded Philadelphia Phillies and emerged as one of the club’s better arms. Through his first six appearances (five starts) he’s gone 2-2 with a 2.31 ERA and 32 strikeouts over just 23.1 innings. Thursday night he got the win in Philadelphia’s 1-0 win over Seattle, pitching 5.1 innings.
Strahm’s performance has more than validated the two-year, $15 million contract he received from the Phillies, a deal that reportedly “blew up” the free agent market for lefty relievers but is a bargain for an effective starter.
Traded away: Matt Barnes, the longtime Red Sox reliever who was shockingly designated for assignment and later dealt to Miami for lefty Richard Bleier, got off to a great start with Miami before getting crushed on Thursday night. Through his first nine appearances he had a 1.93 ERA with a 0.964 WHIP, but then he gave up four runs in one inning to Atlanta, ballooning his ERA for the season to 5.23.
Bleier’s story in Boston has been similar. He has a 6.75 ERA through 10 outings, though that’s in large part due to a rough four runs in 0.1 innings meltdown he had against Tampa Bay on April 13. Outside of that he’s posted a 3.48 ERA in his other nine outings, including six scoreless appearances.
Lefty Josh Taylor, who missed all of last season with a back injury, has appeared in five games for Kansas City so far and allowed three runs over seven innings. Shortstop Adalberto Mondesi, the player Boston got in return, has yet to debut as he rehabs from a torn ACL suffered last April.
The swap of lefty Jake Diekman for catcher Reese McGuire has been a win for Boston. Diekman has a 6.98 ERA in 38 games with the White Sox since last summer and McGuire has far exceeded his career averages by batting .329 with a .835 OPS in 53 games with the Red Sox.
Would the Red Sox have been better off keeping Christian Vazquez? That will probably depend on how prospects Enmanuel Valdez and Wilyer Abreu turn out, but Vazquez did help Houston win a World Series title and is now batting .262 to start his first season in Minnesota.
Pitchers Connor Seabold, Franklin German and Darwinzon Hernandez were all traded to clear 40-man roster spots over the offseason. Seabold has a 5.23 ERA in 10.1 innings out of the bullpen with Colorado and neither German or Hernandez have appeared in the majors so far this season.
Cut loose: After being released by the Red Sox last August, outfielder Jackie Bradley Jr. signed with Toronto and batted .178 in 40 games. This spring he made the Kansas City Royals as a non-roster invitee and is currently batting .125.
Outfielder Franchy Cordero signed with the Yankees and got off to a torrid start, hitting four home runs with 11 RBI in his first seven games, but has since come down to Earth. He’s currently hitting .151 with a .182 on-base percentage.
First baseman Eric Hosmer, whose spot became redundant with Triston Casas set to take over as the starter, is batting .242 with a .675 OPS with the Chicago Cubs. That’s actually better than what the Red Sox have gotten from Casas so far but the 23-year-old rookie should presumably improve as he gets more experience.
Righty Jeurys Familia might be in the most interesting spot. He’s been dreadful with the Athletics, posting a 5.56 ERA with 10 walks against six strikeouts in 11.1 innings, and yet he’s also currently Oakland’s closer, which says a lot about the state of that team’s pitching staff.
Boston’s other castoffs are currently playing in the minors or overseas. Backup catcher Kevin Plawecki signed with Pittsburgh but did not make the team out of spring training. He has since signed a minor league deal with Washington and is currently with the Triple-A Rochester Red Wings. Lefty Austin Davis signed with the Astros organization after a brief stint in Minnesota, Tyler Danish was released after spending the spring in Yankees camp and Hirokazu Sawamura is back in Japan pitching for the Chiba Lotte Marines.
It took a little while for him to get going, but lately Masataka Yoshida has looked every bit like the top-of-the-order force he was billed as coming out of Japan.
Now he’s also emerged as an early American League Rookie of the Year favorite.
Yoshida is currently the betting favorite on FanDuel, BetMGM and Caesars for AL Rookie of the Year, with New York Yankees phenom Anthony Volpe running a close second on all three.
Entering the weekend Yoshida was batting .275 with four home runs, 16 RBI, an .828 OPS and 0.4 wins above replacement, compared to Volpe’s .226 with two home runs, eight RBI, 11 runs scored, eight stolen bases and 0.8 WAR.
The pair lead what is expected to remain a strong field, with Houston righty Hunter Brown, Texas third baseman Josh Jung and Orioles infielder Gunnar Henderson in the mix. Red Sox first baseman Triston Casas was also a preseason favorite but has seen his odds dip following his slow start.
One other potential dark horse? Orioles reliever Yennier Canó, who has been almost perfect to start the season and who has quickly emerged as a potentially elite high-leverage option for Baltimore late in close games.
When the Pittsburgh Pirates came into Boston and swept the Red Sox the second series of the season, it seemed like a real step backwards. The Pirates, after all, were coming off a 100-loss season and have been dreadful for most of the past decade.
In hindsight, that series now doesn’t look so bad.
The Pirates have been arguably the biggest surprise of the season so far. Entering the weekend they led the NL Central at 18-8, good for the second-best record in baseball, and had won nine of their last 10 games. The Pirates are currently on pace to win 112 games, which would be an outrageous 50-win improvement from last year’s 62-100 campaign.
Even if they fall off that torrid pace the Pirates are still in position for the biggest single-season improvement since the Arizona Diamondbacks went from 65 wins in their inaugural 1998 season to 100 the following year.
How have they done it? Pittsburgh’s pitching, which last year ranked 28 out of 30 teams with 5.04 runs allowed per game, now ranks inside the top 10 with 3.73. Their three top young starters, Mitch Keller, Roansy Contreras and Johan Oviedo, have been excellent and the bullpen lights out, with the group combining for an MLB-high 12 saves.
The Pirates finally look like they’re ready to capitalize on their momentum too. The club just signed franchise cornerstone Bryan Reynolds to an eight-year, $106.75 million extension, the largest contract in team history, ensuring the All-Star outfielder remains in Pittsburgh through the rest of the decade. The club also just extended manager Derek Shelton, and long-term deals for players like Keller, Contreras and shortstop Oneil Cruz could be on the horizon.
It’s a similar story for Baltimore, who has already shown that last year’s breakthrough wasn’t a fluke.
Baltimore enters the weekend second in the AL East at 17-8, good for the third best record in MLB behind only Tampa Bay and Pittsburgh. Adley Rutschman is a bona fide superstar, and outside of starting pitcher Kyle Gibson pretty much every other meaningful contributor to the roster is under 30 and on the rise.
It makes you wonder what could have been if the club’s ownership had actually spent some real money this past offseason. Yet if current top prospects Gunnar Henderson and Grayson Rodriguez wind up breaking through, the Orioles may level up into championship contenders anyway.
The Milwaukee Brewers’ strong start has largely been driven by several talented young prospects, but one notable local unfortunately won’t be part of the picture in the near-future.
Sal Frelick, a Lexington native and former Boston College star currently playing for Milwaukee’s Triple-A affiliate, is expected to miss six to eight weeks after undergoing surgery to repair a torn ligament in his left thumb. Frelick suffered the injury sliding into second base during a recent game with the Nashville Sounds and underwent the procedure this past Tuesday, according to MLB.com’s Adam McCalvy.
The injury is a tough blow to one of the fastest rising prospects in the sport. Drafted No. 15 overall by the Brewers in 2021, the outfielder has shot up through the minors and is coming off a 2022 season in which he hit .331 with an .883 OPS along with 11 home runs, 59 RBI and 24 stolen bases. He batted leadoff for Team Italy in the World Baseball Classic and is currently ranked No. 27 on MLB Pipeline’s Top 100 list.