Boston Red Sox: Ranking the top 10 players from 2010s
The latest generation of Red Sox stars in the 2010s have helped the team win four division titles and two more World Series. Here are their ten best players from the decade.
After winning two World Series in the first decade of the twenty-first century, in 2004 and 2007, the Red Sox hit a bit of a dry spell. They just barely missed out on getting back to the World Series in 2008 before a steady decline that culminated with the rock-bottom 2012 season. However, that was also the moment the team had a bit of a rebirth.
Expectations were low heading into 2013 before the Red Sox surprised all of us by finishing in first place and winning the most unexpected World Series in history. A couple of last place finishes followed, but during that time the next generation of homegrown stars blossomed and were promoted to the big leagues to help the team in their next phase.
That next phase led to three straight division-winning seasons and another World Series victory as well as the greatest individual season in franchise history.
Some of the players on this list also appeared on the list of best players from the 2000s because they deserved to be recognized in both decades. Others will show up here after being left off of the previous list because they fit better here due to their accomplishments.
As usual, let’s begin in no particular order.
David Ortiz
This one is a no-brainer and shouldn’t surprise anyone. One of the greatest Red Sox players of the 2000s was also one of the best in the 2010s. David Ortiz was the Red Sox’ greatest free agent signing and in the first decade of the 2000s helped the team win two World Series, in 2004 and 2007, with his tremendous regular season production and his numerous clutch postseason hits.
He was equally as dominant in the 2010s, putting up a ,298 average, 192 home runs, 598 RBI, a .387 OBP, and an OPS of .958 between 2011 and his retirement in 2016. Along the way, Ortiz led the team both on the field and spiritually as they healed New England in the wake of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings as he led them to their third World Series victory of the century.
He’ll forever be known for his series-changing grand slam in the eighth inning of Game Two of the ALCS, but even more for winning the World Series MVP by hitting a preposterous .688 in the series with two home runs, six RBI, and eight walks. Over the last few seasons of his career he served as a mentor to the next generation of stars coming up through the Red Sox system and helped them win the division again in 2016.
While the Red Sox would lose in the 2016 ALDS and Ortiz would retire, he helped set that group on the path that would result in two more division titles and another World Series win in 2018. There’s not much more that can be written about Ortiz that I and others haven’t already expressed. He was, quite simply, the best and most important Red Sox player of both the 2000s and the 2010s.
Dustin Pedroia
Dustin Pedroia is the other Red Sox player in addition to David Ortiz who also appeared on the list of best players of the 2000s. Pedroia has played more seasons this decade although it’s arguable that his best seasons came in the last one. Still, until injuries derailed his career during the 2017 season he was a vital part of the team and one of the best second basemen in the league.
After winning Rookie of the Year in 2007 and the American League MVP in 2008 Pedroia continued to put up very good seasons at the plate in the 2010s while playing excellent defense. He won three more Gold Gloves (in 2011, 2013, 2014) while compiling a .297 average, 86 home runs, 471 RBI, 1135 hits, 543 runs, 406 walks, a .363 OBP, and an OPS of .791 between 2011 and 2017.
During the 2017 season, Pedroia took spikes to the knee from Manny Machado during a play at second and has barely played since, only appearing in three games in 2018 and six in 2019. Each injury setback makes it seem more and more likely as though we’ve seen the last of Dustin Pedroia on the field, but even if that’s the case, there’s no denying that he was one of the best Red Sox players of both the last decade as well as this one.
Jacoby Ellsbury
I struggled with whether to put Jacoby Ellsbury on the 2000s list or this one, but ultimately I decided he belonged on this one. The reality is that the entirety of his Red Sox career, which spanned 2007 to 2013, merits his inclusion but because he straddled the two decades, there was no easy call to make. Since he missed out on the best players of the 2000s, he’s included here, but we’ll look at his numbers for his entire Boston career.
Ellsbury was first called up from the minors in the summer of 2007 but didn’t stick around for more than a cup of coffee until September. His breakthrough was in the ALCS and World Series and he became the starting center fielder beginning in the 2008 season. He had a below average arm but blazing speed in the field and on the bases and he hit for good average. His biggest issue was that be couldn’t stay healthy.
By far his best season was the doomed 2011 campaign when he hit .321 with 32 home runs (a career high, almost quadrupling his previous career high), 105 RBI, 212 hits, 119 runs, 52 walks, 39 stolen bases, a .376 OBP, and an OPS of .928. He also won a Gold Glove that year and many fans, myself included, believe he should have won the AL MVP (he ended up finishing second to Justin Verlander).
For his Red Sox career, Ellsbury hit .288 with 65 home runs, 314 RBI, and 241 stolen bases (including a league leading 70 in 2009). He helped the Red Sox win the World Series in 2007 and 2013 before leaving after the latter in free agency for the New York Yankees. He signed in the Bronx for big money but injuries derailed his career and he hasn’t played since 2017. The Red Sox wisely knew they got the best out of him when they let him walk.
Xander Bogaerts
The current leader of the Red Sox, Xander Bogaerts first came up to the big leagues from the minors late in the 2013 season. He had a fantastic postseason that October, hitting .296 with two RBI (including a big triple) in the twelve games he played during the Red Sox run to winning the World Series.
In 2014, he took over the starting shortstop role before the team tried to convert him to a third baseman when they brought Stephen Drew back for half a season. It seemed to stunt the young infielder’s progress but he bounced back in 2015 once he was settled in for good at short. He hit .320 that year although his power numbers were down, with only seven home runs and 81 RBI despite playing in 156 games.
From 2016 on, though, Bogaerts has been one of the best shortstops in the league, putting up the following offensive numbers:
2016: .294 BA, 21 HR, 89 RBI, 192 H, 115 R, 58 BB, .356 OBP, .802 OPS (157 games)
2017: .273 BA, 10 HR, 62 RBI, 156 H, 94 R, 56 BB, .343 OBP, .746 OPS (148 games)
2018: .288 BA, 23 HR, 103 RBI, 148 H, 72 R, 55 BB, .360 OBP, .883 OPS (136 games)
2019: .309 BA, 33 HR, 117 RBI, 190 H, 110 R, 76 BB, .384 OBP, .939 OPS (155 games)
Bogaerts’ career has been on a steady projection upward and other than his dip in production in 2017 (which the entire team had in the wake of David Ortiz’ retirement after the 2016 season), he just keeps getting better and better. He was an All Star in 2016 and 2019 and has improved his defense immensely to become one of the better defensive shortstops in the league.
With the departure of Mookie Betts in February 2020, Bogaerts is now the leader of this team both on the field and in the clubhouse. After signing an extension, he’s shown his commitment to the team and Red Sox fans are surely excited to see what he’ll do next.
Jackie Bradley
Another of the current Red Sox stars who came up during the 2013 season, Jackie Bradley bounced between Boston and Pawtucket until 2014 when he spent the bulk of the season in the major leagues. From then on, he’s been the Red Sox center fielder and while his streaky hitting is certainly maddening, he more than makes up for it with his stellar defense.
Bradley is arguably the greatest defensive center fielder the Red Sox have ever had and he routinely makes difficult plays look easy. Unfortunately, he’s had the misfortune to play most of his career thus far in an era where there were several stellar defensive center fielders in the American League. That’s kept him at only one Gold Glove (in 2018) so far, although he’s a perennial finalist.
As for his hitting, it’s well-known how incredibly streaky he is at the plate. For stretches he can look like one of the best hitters in the league while during other stretches it seems as though he’ll never hit a baseball again. His career numbers are nothing spectacular: a .230 average with 91 home runs and 354 RBI in seven seasons between 2013 and 2019.
Still, he had a twenty-nine game hitting streak in 2016, was an All Star that same year, and won the ALCS MVP award in 2018 when he had two home runs and nine RBI while almost single-handedly beating the Astros in three of the games the Red Sox won in that series. He slots in perfectly in the nine spot of the order and with his incredible defense, has been a vital part of the Red Sox winning ways this decade.
Mookie Betts
The least surprising entry on this list, Mookie Betts was quite simply the best Red Sox player of the decade and the best complete player they’ve produced since Carl Yastrzemski sixty years ago. First debuting in the majors in 2014, Mookie blossomed into a five-tool player who was one of the best not only on the Red Sox, but in the entire league.
Since looking at his career statistics alone don’t tell the whole story, let’s break them out by season.
2014: .291 BA, 5 HR, 18 RBI, 55 H, 34 R, 21 BB, .368 OBP, .821 OPS (52 games)
2015: .291 BA, 18 R, 77 RBI, 174 H, 92 R, 46 BB, .341 OBP, .820 OPS (145 games)
2016: .318 BA, 31 HR, 113 RBI, 214 H, 122 R, 49 BB, .363 OBP, .897 OPS (158 games)
2017: .264 BA, 24 HR, 102 RBI, 166 H, 101 R, 77 BB, .344 OBP, .803 OPS (153 games)
2018: .346 BA, 32 HR, 80 RBI, 180 H, 129 R, 81 BB, .438 OBP, 1.078 OPS (136 games)
2019: .295 BA, 29 HR, 80 RBI, 176 H, 135 R, 97 BB, .391 OBP, .915 OPS (150 games)
Those are fantastic numbers! In 2016 Betts came in second to Mike Trout in the AL MVP voting and honestly, he probably should have won that year. He did win the AL MVP in 2018 as well as the batting title. He also led the league in runs scored that year (as well as in 2019). While his struggles batting in the postseason are well-known, he’s more than made up for it with his defense.
Evoking memories of Dwight Evans, Mookie mastered the cavernous right field at Fenway Park with all of its weird angles and quirks. He won four straight Gold Gloves from 2016 to 2019 and was also an All Star those four years. He was the face of the franchise and the Red Sox trading him in his prime to the Dodgers for pennies on the dollar (in his walk year, to be fair) and the way they handled it will be a blight on the team for years to come.
Players like Mookie Betts don’t come around that often and while he’s gone long before he should have been due to the Red Sox lack of foresight, he certainly made his mark in Boston during the six seasons he was here.
Koji Uehara
It may seem strange to include a closer who only spent four seasons with the Red Sox, but in those four seasons Koji Uehara was one of the best closers in all of baseball. His seasons in Boston, which spanned 2013-2016, were the best of his career and its no hyperbole to state that he was one of the main reasons the Red Sox won the World Series in 2013.
Koji’s 2013 season alone is worthy of inclusion here. During that magical year, he was 4-1 with a 1.09 ERA, 101 strikeouts, 9 walks, and 21 saves in 74.1 innings pitched. His WHIP was a miniscule 0.565 and at one point during the season he retired 37 straight batters.
He was even better in the postseason, going 1-1 with a 1.00 ERA, 16 strikeouts, and 7 saves in 13.2 innings of work across the ALDS, ALCS (of which he was the MVP), and World Series. His seven saves tied the major league record for a single postseason and he recorded the final out of the World Series by striking out Matt Carpenter of the St. Louis Cardinals to end Game Six.
What made all of that even more remarkable was that he was 38 in 2013 and was dominant at an age when most pitchers are already out of the league. For his four Red Sox seasons, Uehara went 14-13 with a 2.32 ERA, 291 strikeouts, and 79 saves in 226 innings.
Chris Sale
Chris Sale has only been on the Red Sox for three seasons after spending the first seven years of his career with the Chicago White Sox, but he’s already made his mark as the most dominant starting pitcher they’ve had this decade (when healthy).
After being acquired via trade in the winter of 2016, Sale had a fantastic first season in Boston in 2017, going 17-8 with a 2.90 ERA, 308 strikeouts, and a WHIP of .970 in 214.1 innings pitched. He led the league in innings pitched and strikeouts and was the first pitcher in the American League since Pedro Martinez in 1999 to eclipse the 300 mark.
Sale ran out of gas a bit toward the end of that season and went 0-2 in the four game ALDS loss to the Houston Astros (although as we know now, Houston was cheating so take Sale’s losses with a grain of salt). He came back in 2018 to post a 12-4 record, a 2.11 ERA, 237 strikeouts, and a WHIP of .861 in 158.0 innings. He again slowed down and battled injury during the end of the season and was used sparingly in the postseason.
That October, he went 1-0 in the ALDS and earned no-decisions in his ALCS and World Series starts. He was, however, effective out of the bullpen in games he didn’t start and will forever be remembered by Red Sox fans for his work in the ninth inning of Game Five of the World Series when he retired the Dodgers side and ended the series by striking out Manny Machado, literally bringing him to his knees.
Sale spent 2019 battling injuries and himself and only went 6-11 with a 4.40 ERA and 218 strikeouts in 147.1 innings pitched before his season ended in August. He made an aborted comeback attempt in spring training in 2020 before being shut down and undergoing Tommy John surgery in late March.
It remains to be seen if the five-year contract extension Sale signed in 2019 (which began in 2020) proves to be an albatross around the Red Sox neck, but for his 2017 and 2018 seasons alone he was well worth the trade to bring him here.
Craig Kimbrel
Like Koji Uehara before him, Craig Kimbrel only spent three seasons in Boston and yet he was integral to the team winning a World Series. From 2016 to 2018 he was one of the best closers in the league and seemed unhittable until he apparently lost some of his effectiveness toward the end of 2018 and into the postseason.
His numbers during his three Boston seasons look like this:
2016: 2-6 W-L, 3.40 ERA, 83 K, 31 SV, 53.0 IP (57 games)
2017: 5-0 W-L, 1.43 ERA, 126 K, 35 SV, 69.0 IP (67 games)
2018: 5-1 W-L, 2.74 ERA, 96 K, 42 SV, 62.1 IP (63 games)
Toward the end of the 2018 season, it seemed as though hitters had figured out Kimbrel and while he remained effective, every appearance of his in the postseason that year was a rollercoaster. He recorded six saves across the ALDS, ALCS, and World Series, but none of them were easy and in most of them he was bailed out by some stellar defensive play behind him.
His 11.57 ERA in the ALDS attests to that; he was better in the ALCS (4.50 ERA) and World Series (4.15 ERA), but still shaky. Entering free agency after the season, he made his (frankly absurd) salary demands known and the Red Sox made a token lowball offer that he turned down before hitting the open market.
Still, the Red Sox wouldn’t have won three straight division titles or the World Series without Kimbrel and he was an All Star all three of seasons in Boston. He also recorded his 300th career save (becoming the youngest pitcher ever to do so) in 2018. He was the next in a lineage of great Red Sox closers following Jonathan Papelbon and Koji Uehara and deserves inclusion on this list.
Rick Porcello
This one might raise a few eyebrows given those who are now known to have been left off of this list, but hear me out. Rick Porcello came over in the Yoenis Cespedes trade in 2015 (in effect, Jon Lester begat Rick Porcello by way of Cespedes). The Red Sox immediately signed him to a four-year extension before he’d even thrown a single pitch and while he’d been good in Detroit, we had no idea why they jumped the gun.
From 2015 to 2019, Porcello was the most reliable and durable pitcher the Red Sox had, routinely making 28 or more starts in each of those seasons. He seemed to fall prey to the “even year curse” where he pitched well in even-numbered years and poorly in odd-numbered years. Luckily, two of those even-numbered years coincided with great success.
His 2016 season (22-4, 3.15 ERA, 189 K, 1.009 WHIP) won him the American League Cy Young Award. In 2018, he went 17-7 with a 4.28 ERA and 190 strikeouts in helping the team win the World Series. His one glaring flaw was his propensity to give up home runs and he even led the league in homers given up in 2017 with 38 of them.
For his entire Red Sox career, Porcello went 73-55 with a 4.50 ERA, and 852 strikeouts in 964 innings. While Chris Sale and David Price may have been better pure pitchers, Porcello was durable, a bulldog on the mound, and delivered in plenty of big spots himself. He deserves to be on this list.
Honorable Mentions
Here we are at the part where we look at the players who didn’t make the cut but still deserve some mention. First up is utility man and fan favorite Brock Holt, who spent from 2013 to 2019 with the Red Sox. He did whatever was asked of him and could play any position besides pitcher and catcher.
He was scrappy and fun and while he battled injuries, he’ll forever be remembered for hitting for the only postseason cycle in history during a 16-1 romp of the Yankees in the 2018 ALDS. Andrew Benintendi, his Flow Bro (as they liked to call themselves) opened a lot of eyes when he came up from the minors in the summer of 2016.
He had a very good rookie year in 2017 and a solid 2018 before regressing in 2019. It remains to be seen which direction his career trajectory will take over the next few seasons, but right now it looks like the Red Sox are set in left field for a while. JD Martinez has only spent two seasons in Boston but he’s put up monster numbers as the Red Sox successor to David Ortiz.
Martinez flirted with the Triple Crown in 2018 and had a “down” season in 2019 that would be the envy of just about anyone else in the league. Perhaps just as important, he’s a student and teacher of hitting that has helped his teammates improve their own craft. Rafael Devers is young and has only spent three seasons in Boston, but he seemed to take the next step in 2019 and his bat should be a big presence in the lineup for years to come.
Hanley Ramirez was a top Red Sox prospect when he was traded to the Florida Marlins in 2006 for Josh Beckett and Mike Lowell, a trade that helped Boston win the 2007 World Series. The Sox brought him back as a free agent in 2015 and converted him into a first baseman since they were all set at shortstop with Xander Bogaerts.
While he wasn’t great defensively and wasn’t the most disciplined hitter, he supplied some pop in the middle of the order, hitting 19, 23, 30, and 6 home runs in his four Red Sox seasons before the team released him early in the 2018 season. Finally, we’ll end with two pitchers. First, David Price who was the big free agent acquisition in 2016 and whose contract was perhaps an overcorrection for letting Jon Lester go.
Price was very good, not great, in his four Boston seasons and exorcised his postseason demons by winning the final game of the 2018 ALCS and two games in the World Series. I and many others feel that he should have been named World Series MVP over Steve Pearce for his efforts. He was eventually thrown in with Mookie Betts in the Red Sox salary dump of February 2020.
Next. Dead Ball Era All-Stars. dark
Last but not least is Eduardo Rodriguez who has developed from an inconsistent pitcher with great stuff into a guy who went 19-6 in 2019 and should have won 20 games if it weren’t for the atrocious Red Sox bullpen. That was the first season Rodriguez seemed to put everything together while staying healthy. If he can build on that going forward, the Red Sox will have another very good starting pitcher in their rotation for years to come.