At the end of last week, Thomas Nestico made the following post and caught many Red Sox fans off guard:
Yes, that’s the Boston Red Sox up near the top of the teams leaderboard in Defensive Runs Saved, and you know what, I don’t think it’s a fluke.
Up until the last handful of days, the quality of the Red Sox defense has been easy to ignore for several reasons. They include, but are not limited to:
- The Red Sox leading the American League in errors during each of the last three seasons before 2026.
- The Red Sox starting off 2026 with the most errors in the AL again over the first couple of weeks (before really cleaning it up of late).
- The team’s dreadful 9-17 record over the first 26 games overshadowing any finer details.
- Roman Anthony getting the yips for the first few series of the year and having a few bad throws go viral.
- Caleb Durbin’s ice cold bat out of the gate obscuring the fact that this dude can really play some defense.
Understandably, the vibes weren’t great. But now we’re
a week into May, and with the dust settling, the metrics under the hood don’t just look good, they look really, really good. So good in fact that if the Red Sox can get the top of this rotation healthy with Garrett Crochet, Ranger Suarez and Sonny Gray in the coming weeks, their whole run prevention philosophy just might pay dividends.
Let’s take a more detailed look at what these Defensive Runs Saved figures look like for the ten Red Sox players with the most defensive innings logged so far in 2026 (going into Wednesday night’s game):
Several things jump out here, so let’s take a quick trip around the diamond and understand how the Red Sox might be this good defensively.
First up (and most complex), Roman Anthony — because against all odds, I think the yips or whatever was going on with his throws earlier in the year are actually working to his advantage now. (God I love baseball!) His problem isn’t arm strength (that actually grades out as a weapon with an 89.9mph velocity average), his issue was either mechanical or in his head, leading to a handful of throws so bad they went viral.
However, Roman’s good throws are actually really good. So you’re left with a situation where teams saw the few horrendous throws earlier in the year and wanted to pick on him. But what they’ve actually done in the process is give him more opportunities to throw guys outs, and he’s taken advantage of that, with two assists in one series against the Blue Jays last week. You want a guy that’s impossible to scout against? I give you a left fielder who throws a 35 foot worm burner one week and then nails you from 200 feet away the next.
At the same time, Anthony also makes tremendous reads on the ball off the bat and takes very efficient routes when tracking down fly balls. So even though he’s not the fastest guy in the world and doesn’t make many flashy highlight plays with the leather, he gets to way more balls than you’d otherwise think at first glace. You know how he’s really good at reading a ball out of a pitcher’s hand and therefore knows how to work a bunch of walks at the plate? Well, that’s his superpower all over the diamond. His initial reads are so good that in just 65 career starts in the outfield over both the 2025 and 2026 seasons (37 in right and 35 in left) he’s already racked up a +13 Defensive Runs Saved total.
Is the metric overrating his defense some? Almost certainly yes! But when it comes to the question of whether he’s an above average defensive outfielder, it almost doesn’t matter because anybody who lands this far on the positive side of the spectrum in so few games is good. It’s just a matter of how good when all the details fill in over time. This is a big part of the reason why I was so concerned in early April when he started throwing the ball away. Anthony’s career ceiling is so much higher as an above average defensive outfield as opposed to getting pinned to DH.
Then we have Wilyer Abreu. In his case, we can just go straight to the video for from last night.
This is a prime example of how the Red Sox run prevention strategy can totally alter a game. They ended up pitching a shutout, but if this ball falls in, it’s at least 2-0 and probably 3-0 Detroit in just the second inning.
Great DRS numbers are one thing, but when you see it in practice, working to propel the team to wins on the field, it’s something to get extremely excited about. Abreu is getting it done.
Elsewhere, Caleb Durbin’s been fantastic defensively, and the more you see him work his glove magic, the more you realize it’s not a fluke. In fact, the biggest threat to losing his defense is his bat potentially being so terrible you just can’t afford to keep him in the lineup every day. However, he’s started to hit a tad more lately, and if that’s a sign of things to come, it again bodes well for the Red Sox defense long-term.
On the other infield corner, you have Willson Contreras, who has been as good as the Red Sox could have hoped for at the position. Even if he’s not going to be this good going forward, the former catcher again has enough innings at first base now to know you’re at least going to get some brand of plus defense here as well.
Then from there, you have what I think might be the most exciting part of the calculus. Ceddanne Rafaela and Marcelo Mayer haven’t even hit their defensive strides yet. We know how good Rafaela can be in center, and he hasn’t shown that yet in 2026. Mayer meanwhile can play anywhere in the infield and make it look smooth as butter. While his 2026 numbers don’t jump out in limited innings at second base yet, I’m confident that he’ll not only improve there, but that he’s also capable to taking the reigns from Trevor Story at shortstop at some point. If that happens, you then also potentially improve Trevor Story’s defense with a move to second base, where he was excellent in 2022.
In other words, so much of the momentum driving the Red Sox production in the Defensive Runs Saved department has been on the corners (Durbin, Contreras, Anthony and Abreu), but between Rafaela in center and a swap between Mayer and Story that feels like it needs to come at some point this season, the Red Sox can actually unlock a whole additional level of defense right up the middle of the diamond they haven’t really displayed yet.
Their defense isn’t just good; it has the chance to be above average everywhere. And the deeper we get into the season, the more this is going to matter as game-saving defensive plays are often contagious. If what’s going on under the hood is remotely real, it’s only a matter of time before the Red Sox start stealing a bunch of games with their gloves.
