If you asked me six months ago what I thought the Red Sox lineup would look like by season’s end, my answer would have been shockingly wrong. Going though each section of the diamond, here’s where my general
thought process stood in April:
- The outfield would mostly feature Roman Anthony, Ceddanne Rafaela, and Wilyer Abreu (after a midseason trade of Jarren Duran).
- The infield would eventually transform into Alex Bregman at third, Marcelo Mayer and Kristian Campbell settling in at short and second, and Triston Casas still at first overcoming his early season slump. (Trevor Story would still be in the mix, but probably losing plate appearances to the youngsters and getting in games most often against left handed starting pitchers.)
- DH would see Devers settling into the position for the long haul. (Obvious, right?)
- And catcher would have time split between Carlos Narvaez and Connor Wong. (Hey, I can’t get everything wrong.)
If you stack all this up, I was probably thinking of a lineup looking something like:
- Roman Anthony (LF)
- Alex Bregman (3B)
- Kristian Campbell (2B)
- Rafael Devers (DH)
- Triston Casas (1B)
- Carlos Narvaez (C)
- Wilyer Abreu (RF)
- Marcelo Mayer (SS)
- Ceddanne Rafaela (CF)
As we now know, the baseball gods took one peek at that and said:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Not only did the lineup look nothing like this by the end of the season, but only one of those top five guys took a single plate appearance for the team after September 2nd — And he may never take another plate appearance in a Red Sox uniform again.
The point I’m getting at is the Red Sox lineup just spent the season in massive flux. Multiple main characters came in and out like the tide, and these dramatic changes are worth highlighting as we head into another six month period ripe for chaos. In other words, we might be only halfway through a twelve month roller coaster.
Now, to be fair, some lineup evolution was always expected coming into the 2025 season, but these changes evolved in ways none of us expected, and few of us wanted. Specifically, when it comes to the big three prospects.
Amid all the excitement, hope, joy and promise of the young core coming together, one painful and problematic fact marred the end of the season: Roman Anthony, Marcelo Mayer and Kristian Campbell got a combined zero plate appearances down the stretch. This season was supposed to be about them, and by mid June, it was becoming about them. (They even all appeared in the lineup at the same time.)
And then step by step, injury by injury, the whole thing was dismantled down the stretch. As the dust settles on the season, I find this increasingly frustrating as I would’ve loved for them to get that high intensity baseball experience under their belt.
To dig a bit further on how the lineup transformed in odd and unexpected ways over the season, here’s how many plate appearances everybody got each month (minimum 20 total on the season). I left the zeros as blank spots on the table because they stick out better this way.
There’s a thousand stories in those rises and falls, but perhaps they’re told even better if we take that same table of data and instead order it by the number of plate appearances everybody got in the month of September instead of by total plate appearances on the season. Here’s what that looks like:
The bottom of this chart is both crazy and depressing. Six of the seven guys at the bottom of this list are guys I would have guessed to be in my theoretical September lineup from back in April. For all that went right in the macro of 2025, some things also went very, very wrong.
I mean, we got to the end of the season and had Nathaniel Lowe, Nate Eaton, and Nick Sogard playing major roles in do-or-die games. We’re going to pull up those lineups from the Yankee Wild Card Series in a few years and gasp in horror at how ridiculously under gunned the lineup was and how badly the front office didn’t meet the moment at the trade deadline.
But for now, we also need to look forward, because the period of radical roster reshuffling probably isn’t done. If we go back up to the top of that first table that sorts the 2025 Red Sox hitters by total plate appearances, there’s a real chance three of the top four guys there will not be in the Red Sox lineup on Opening Day in Cincinnati next year.
Alex Bregman is going to opt out and could end up anywhere. Trevor Story could also opt out and blow an even bigger hole in the left side of the infield (although the Red Sox have a clause that would allow them to counter that move if they’re willing to tack on another $25 million to his contract in 2028), and Jarren Duran appears to be prime trade bait going into the winter. That’s over 1,800 plate appearances of work that could be up for redistribution if the offseason breaks a certain way.
And if you think that’s extreme or that Alex Bregman coming back isn’t something we have to worry about, just ask yourself if the same people telling you that story are the ones who also said Xander Bogaerts would sign back when he hit free agency. The Red Sox have developed a very strong track record of parting ways with players whose position on the team looked in the bank, and until that changes, you have every right to remain skeptical.
Right now, there’s not a single person I can confidently say will be in the Red Sox infield at either third, short, second, or first when they take the field to start next season. Story could be a free agent, Bregman will be a free agent, Marcelo Mayer will get asked about in trades, Triston Casas’ comeback is uncertain, and I’m not even sure where else to go from there. At least two of those guys probably end up back, but which ones are most likely is anybody’s guess at this stage.
If the last six months are any sort of harbinger for the next six months, I’d say to expect the unexpected.
