With Trevor Story’s offseason decision still to be made, the Red Sox should at least be looking at the market to see how they could replace him if he ends up elsewhere. Although there have been reports
that Story feels a sense of loyalty to Boston after a comeback campaign in 2025 and three tough years to begin his contract, his decision can’t really be predicted now, much less guaranteed.
Since there are two major question marks on the left side of the infield for the Red Sox heading into the offseason (with Alex Bregman opting out) Boston should take a serious look at Bo Bichette, whether or not Story opts out. While I’m currently assuming that Bregman returns to the Red Sox next year in some fashion, Bichette’s flexibility — along with that of Marcelo Mayer — provides Boston with a good fill-in in either situation.
Bichette has played shortstop for his entire major league career (in fact, he played second base for the first time in his MLB career in Game 1 of the World Series last week), but many project that he’ll have to move to second or third at some point due to his relative lack of range and supremacy in advanced defensive metrics. With this in mind, Bichette provides a salve to infield worries in many situations for Boston this offseason.
After a career-worst 2024, Bichette was leading the American League in hits on Sept. 6, when he suffered a knee sprain that ended his regular season. He slashed .311/.357/.483 in the 2025 regular season and finished with 181 hits and 18 home runs over 139 games. His 94 RBI was the second-highest single-season total of his career, behind only his 2021 season — his first full year in the majors — when he collected 102 RBI in 20 more games played.
His defense is really not good, and would be a far cry from what we saw from Trevor Story for the majority of 2025, but his bat more than makes up for this, especially if he’s able to shift to second base (ideally), or even third.
The major concern when considering Bichette is his propensity for lower-body injuries — and Boston needs another injury-prone young infielder like they need a hole in the head. But his ability to come back in the World Series is an encouraging sign, and since his first full season in the majors (2021), 2024 was the only year where his season was cut significantly short due to injury, as he played in only 81 games while dealing with a calf strain in July and August before fracturing a finger in September, which ended his season for good.
Despite the slight injury propensity, a 27-year-old Bichette would add a perfect piece of consistent hitting to a sometimes volatile Red Sox offense. If we think about Boston’s infield with one of Story or Bregman gone — which is what it’d take for the Red Sox to seriously consider Bichette — a cast of Bregman/Story, Marcelo Mayer, Bichette, Romy Gonzalez and Triston Casas (eventually) would be much more well-rounded than the cast of misfits that the Red Sox had to trot out frequently in 2025. Both Bichette and Mayer could be considered at third, short, or second (with Mayer taking priority at short if Story leaves), which provides a sense of flexibility that Boston didn’t have this year. It also gives the Red Sox much better odds of putting out their best lineup every day than they had in 2025, when they tended to, rather inexplicably, build a lineup and infield depending on whether Jarren Duran was playing after Roman Anthony’s call-up.
Bichette is entering his prime at only 27 years old and coming off the best season of his career. Because of this (and his defensive flexibility), he will have an extensive market in free agency, especially considering the number of premium shortstops who have been locked down in recent years and the lack of elite shortstops nearing free agency any time soon. He is essentially a younger, better-hitting, worse-fielding Dansby Swanson (who many fans wanted to go after following Xander Bogaerts’ departure in 2022) who has the ability to maximize the value of his bat even further by switching positions defensively.
Bichette is currently projected to get somewhere around Willy Adames’ 7-year, $182 million deal, but a longer-term contract is definitely in play considering his youth. When judging this against the massive deals that players like Francisco Lindor, Trea Turner and Corey Seager have recently commanded, if Boston has a hole of any kind appear in its infield over the offseason, Craig Breslow should seriously consider going after Bichette to add a young, flexible infielder to a still-developing team and guaranteeing a consistent performer at shortstop or second base for the first time in years.
