Red Sox: 5 sleepers to watch for on the 2017 roster
These players on the Boston Red Sox roster are either being overlooked by fans and media or haven’t gotten their due.
The Red Sox will be a really, really good team in 2017. For the most part, their roster is set as we approach their first games of Spring Training. The infield will look familiar, Xander Bogaerts and Dustin Pedroia up the middle with Hanley Ramirez at first (against lefties). There’s no doubt debate as to who will start in the outfield either, superstar rookie Andrew Benintendi will get the bulk of duties in left, while Jackie Bradley and Mookie Betts will assume their familiar roles in center and right.
The Red Sox won’t have many position players that can exceed expectations this season. Coming off a year in which they led the league – by a lot – in runs scored, their lineup will be expected to go about business as usual.
Then there’s the pitching staff, we’re all familiar with the big three atop their rotation – though there could be some surprises there. Steven Wright, Eduardo Rodriguez, and Drew Pomeranz will fight for the final two spots during Spring Training, and if you read our Round Table article, you’ll know who we at BSI think will be left out. The bullpen has some more room for fluidity, but Tyler Thornburg and Craig Kimbrel are locks to hold down the eighth and ninth innings.
So, what makes a sleeper? These are the players that have the highest chances of exceeding expectations in 2017. Some are familiar picks, others might come as a surprise, but all have been overlooked to some extent heading into the season.
Price is probably least deserving of a spot on this list, based on his overall career numbers, but makes it anyway just because of how down on him Red Sox fans were following his performance last year.
He’ll be the first to admit that 2016 was not up to his standards, but it also wasn’t that far off. He gave up a run and a half more per nine innings last season than the year before, but he was still able to provide value to a team that desperately needed a strong pitcher at the top of their rotation. Looking at his FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) or xFIP (Expected Fielding Independent Pitching), his season doesn’t look like the disaster that fans make it out to be.
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He posted 3.60 and 3.52 measurements in those stats respectively (a good FIP is around 3.80, while an awful one 4.70). Based on Price’s numbers, he was slightly above average adjusting for defensive play and luck.
That he wasn’t as bad as many thought in 2016 makes him a prime sleeper candidate for the Red Sox. Rick Porcello deserves attention after his Cy Young Award and there will be a lot of hype surrounding Chris Sale after the cost it took to acquire him, leaving many to overlook how good David Price could be. Last year was the first time since 2013 that he wasn’t worth 6+ WAR, don’t be surprised if he returns to form in in 2017.
He threw just 2.2 innings for the Red Sox in 2016, before having his season ended by Tommy John surgery on May 24th. He’s approximately nine months into his recovery right now, so we shouldn’t expect to see him pitch until mid-May, but Carson Smith has the potential to be an x-factor for the bullpen.
Acquired in a trade with the Seattle Mariners last year, the Red Sox dealt Wade Miley and reliever Jonathan Aro in exchange for Roenis Elias and Smith. Neither Aro nor Elias have made an impact at the major league level, while Miley pitched 166 innings between the Mariners and Baltimore Orioles with a 5.37 ERA and 0.1 WAR. Even though Smith missed the entirety of 2016, the Red Sox are still coming out on top in this deal.
Last season was a wash, but the Red Sox acquired a 27-year-old reliever with a career 194 ERA+ and 2.11 FIP for a replacement level starter. With the depth the Sox already have in the bullpen, John Farrell can afford to ease him back into action and protect him by pitching in spots where he’s most effective. He held right-handed batters to a .167 average in 2015, with an xFIP of 1.77. In Carson Smith, the Red Sox have a great relief pitcher, with four years of team control, but is injury prone because of an unorthodox delivery.
He might not have been the flashiest signing or acquisition the Red Sox made the past offseason, but he’s a perfect fit for this lineup. Going into his eighth major league season, we know exactly who Mitch Moreland is as a player. He’s not the type of player that will hit for average or drive in 100 runs, but he provides solid pop and a great glove at first. He’s not a bad hitter, he has 45 home runs over the past two seasons and a 101 OPS+, but he will employ a defense first mentality this season.
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Moreland led American League first basemen in Ultimate Zone Rating and finished second in Defensive Runs Saved, en route to his first career Gold Glove Award last season. With the potency the Red Sox have in their lineup, he won’t be expected to provide the typical bat we see out of first baseman. But that doesn’t mean he can’t contribute.
The virtue of having a free DH spot is that John Farrell can platoon Hanley Ramirez and Moreland at first without losing Hanley’s bat against right-handed hitters. Over his career, Moreland has a .240/.258 left-handed/right-handed split, but the difference runs deeper than average. He owns a career OPS+ of 80 against lefties compared to 105 versus righties, and homers every 35 at-bats on average with a southpaw on the mound as opposed to once every 20 with a right-hander. In this lineup, he won’t be expected to produce against lefties, and can instead focus on excelling in the situation that he’s most prone to success.
His one-year, $5.5 million contract won’t carry much in terms of expectation, but Moreland is a solid platoon hitter that impresses with his glove. I wouldn’t be surprised if he quietly hits 15-20 home runs at the bottom of the order while playing above average defense at first.
In contrast to Mitch Moreland, Pablo Sandoval signed with the Red Sox carrying lofty expectations. A World Series MVP and 3-time champion, Sandoval has been an unmitigated disaster since leaving the Giants. He has one of the worst contracts in baseball and the most to prove of any player on the roster.
The Sandoval-Boston experience has not worked two years into his 5-year, $95 million deal and because of that, his expectations are at an all-time low. He’ll never give the Red Sox back they paid for after being worth -1.1 WAR in his first two seasons and $60 million left on his contract, but he should bounce back a little bit this season.
Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projection system doesn’t expect Sandoval to be an overly productive player in 2017, but he’ll at least bring something positive to the table. His system projects Sandoval to receive 441 plate appearances and contribute 0.5 WAR. Nowhere near what the Red Sox are paying for, but far better than what he’s contributed thus far. His contract is already a sunk cost, so anything positive has to be seen as a win from management’s perspective.
No one from the media or Red Sox Nation is expecting Sandoval to be a bright spot on the roster this season, but it’s easy to impress when the bar is set so low. Based on his offseason, he seems motivated, now he needs to prove it with his play.
If you’re noticing a trend in these picks, most of the players have been a disappointment so far in their Red Sox careers. Part of a deal with the St. Louis Cardinals, Kelly was acquired with Allen Craig for John Lackey. As a starting pitcher, he’s been nothing but mediocre over his career, with a 4.13 ERA in 431.1 innings pitched. Red Sox management figured that out part way through last season and moved Kelly into a full-time bullpen role.
Since making the transition, he put up a 1.02 ERA with 10.9 K/9 in 14 relief appearances. With a high-90s fastball and devastating slider that he developed in the postseason, Kelly has all the tools to develop into a shutdown middle innings reliever. But just 14 regular season appearances is an incredibly small sample size. All told, he faced just 80 batters as a reliever including the postseason in 2016. It’s hard to extrapolate just how productive he’ll be in 2017, but it’s clear that he belongs in the bullpen.
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Thornburg and Kimbrel will get all of the attention at the back of the bullpen this season, but Joe Kelly, along with the aforementioned Carson Smith are prime candidates to fly under the radar with great seasons.