Greatest Red Sox players who should have stayed in Boston

Another favorite of mine growing up, Wade Boggs was the Red Sox third basemen for the majority of the 1980s into the early 1990s. He spent eleven seasons with the Sox and was one of the greatest hitters of the decade, hitting over .300 for the first ten seasons of his career before dipping to .259 in 1992, his last with the Red Sox.

Boggs won six Silver Slugger awards and five American League batting titles as a member of the Red Sox and holds the career record for batting average at Fenway Park with a .369 mark. In his Red Sox career, he hit .337, albeit with only 85 home runs and 690 RBI. He had seven consecutive seasons of 200 or more hits, a record that stood until it was broken by Ichiro Suzuki decades later.

Boggs was a free agent after the 1992 season and signed with the hated New York Yankees, with whom he played for five seasons (and won a World Series in 1996) before finishing his career with two seasons playing for the expansion Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays. Boggs ended up collecting his 3,000th hit in a Devil Rays uniform to go along with his career .328 average, marks that helped him easily get into Cooperstown.

While his number was retired by the Red Sox and he wears a Red Sox cap on his Hall of Fame plaque, it’s always been a shame that Boggs wasn’t able to continue his exquisite hitting and fielding (he won two Gold Gloves after leaving the Red Sox) in Boston and spend his entire career with the team.