It’s pitching preview time, ladies and gentlemen. Over the next several days, I’ll be writing 10,000 words or so about everyone you might see pitching for the Red Sox to start the season. I’ve put the team’s starting options into tiers because that’s how my brain works. Don’t think of them as rankings, but rather buckets based on some similarities I see.
Yesterday we started with a look at Garrett Crochet, one of the best pitchers in baseball. Today we move on to..
Tier Two: Been Around The Block
This next tier consists of Ranger
Suarez and Sonny Gray, the two guys who are getting paid a lot of money to be in the Red Sox rotation. Suarez is entering his eighth season, while Gray is entering his 14th. While labeling guys as “a decent two” or “a three for a playoff team” is a silly endeavor in my opinion, these guys will likely start on the second and third day of the season.
Ranger Suárez
2025 in a sentence: Suarez started the season on the IL, but was rock solid once he got back on the field in May.
Ranger Suarez has been remarkably consistent over the past four seasons. He’s averaging 26 starts, 147 innings, and a 3.59 ERA over that span. 2026 will be his first season with a team not named the Philadelphia Phillies, but you can expect more of the same from Suarez.
For Suarez, it’s all about command. He’s going to be really tough on lefties and won’t see many of them as a result. He pounds the inside part of the plate with sinkers and four-seamers, before turning to his curveball and slider out of the zone to put hitters away. The curveball is particularly effective at getting hitters to expand the zone; the chase rate on the pitch over the last three seasons is nearly 50%. He’ll also mix in his changeup with two strikes, though the Red Sox have generally avoided same-handed changeups. It’s been incredibly effective in small samples, though, so they might allow him to keep that arrow in his quiver.
On the other side, it’s a much more even mix, with each of his five pitches accounting for 15% and 25% of his offerings. His sinker still leads the way and gets early strikes, but the contact against it from righties is better than lefties, while his cutter is a reliable strike-getter early in at-bats as well and avoids hard contact. A kind of fun, or at least fun to me, testament to his command is that only two non-four-seam pitches generated a higher percentage of foul balls than Suarez’s cutter (27.7%). Because he doesn’t use the pitch in two-strike counts very often, those are almost entirely productive pitches.
While Suarez will throw any pitch in any count, he turns to his changeup and curveball most often as his strikeout pitches against righties. The changeup is incredibly effective with a two-strike chase rate of 43%. The curveball isn’t as devastating, but he avoids mistakes with it and can drop it in the zone for free strikes. He uses the four-seam at the top of the zone as well, and it’s outperformed what one might expect given the shape over the past three seasons, with putaway rates over 20% thanks to impeccable command.
Suarez has his approach, and when he executes, he’s as good as anyone. He’s slated to pitch in the World Baseball Classic for Venezuela, which will give us a good look at any tweaks he made to his arsenal over the offseason. It’d be nice to see him gain a tick or two of velocity as well. He was at about 93 mph just two years ago, but a sudden drop has him sitting closer to 90 mph today. Suarez is your favorite pitcher’s favorite pitcher and has shown the ability to survive without premium velocity. I’d expect more of the same from him in 2026.
More Suarez: How new Red Sox pitcher Ranger Suárez finesses his way through a lineup
Sonny Gray
2025 in a sentence: Gray’s season line was marred by a number of blow-up outings, but the underlying numbers paint a better picture.
Sonny Gray had five games with six or more earned runs allowed last season. I hate excluding games from a line because they all count, but I feel comfortable calling that a fluke. His 26.7% strikeout rate was among the best in baseball, as was his 5% walk rate.
Gray had reverse splits in 2025, but is roughly platoon-neutral for his career. He used six different pitches in 2025, with significant differences against each side of the plate. Early in at-bats, righties primarily saw sinkers and cutters, with occasional curveballs dropped in for called strikes. With two strikes, he went to his sweeper. Gray called himself one of the best spinners in the league, and his sweeper supports that. Against righties, nearly one in every four pitches resulted in a whiff. They also swung at over 50% of the sweepers he threw out of the zone. He pairs it with a backdoor sinker that freezes hitters as they give up on the pitch, expecting it to spin off the plate.
Against lefties, Gray used more four-seam fastballs and curveballs early in counts. Each pitch had a strike rate over 65%, but the ideal contact rate against each was on the high side, though opponents hit the ball on the ground frequently. A changeup accounted for 15% of his pitches to lefties, primarily early in at-bats, but a 55% strike rate and 43% ideal contact rate make it a candidate to be replaced by something else. His cutter and sinker each earned strikes at a high rate in a small sample, but were also hit hard. With two strikes, his sweeper was again the star, getting whiffs on 26% of pitches, as well as a huge chase rate (48.7%). The contact quality from lefties is somewhat of a concern, but his ability to miss bats compensates for it.
I mentioned blow-up outings, and home runs were the culprit for many of them. He allowed 25 on the season, though his 22.7% home run per fly ball rate should come down closer to league average. Overall, for Gray, I’d expect his splits to flip, with righties having a more difficult time than lefties, based on his ability to pitch to the glove side. RedSoxStats on Twitter pointed out that over the last two seasons, most of his hard contact allowed has come to right center field, where the Red Sox have two Gold Glove outfielders stationed on a nightly basis.
Gray isn’t the flashiest pitcher in the rotation, but he’s a veteran who will mix his pitches, sequence, and compete each time he takes the mound.
