It would be really nice for the Boston Red Sox to have a right-handed-hitting outfielder with pop. While Ceddanne Rafaela has put up a career-best season at the plate, adding another above-average hitter from the right side would make a ton of sense and help breakup the sea of lefties that includes Jarren Duran, Roman Anthony, Wilyer Abreu and Masataka Yoshida.
The Red Sox might be in line to find just that if rumors are true. The Seattle Mariners are likely to lose left fielder Randy Arozarena in free agency, according to Ryan Divish of The Seattle Times, and there's some speculation that the former Tampa Bay Ray would prefer to return to the East Coast, with Boston lining up as the perfect destination.
Arozarena is enjoying the best season of his career, hitting .279/.380/.479 with 26 homers, 25 steals, and a career-best 5.3 fWAR. This wouldn't necessarily be the case of the Red Sox signing a player coming off a career year for an inflated value. While not at these heights, the 31-year-old had been very good for a long time.
In fact, Arozarena has posted six straight 20-20 seasons, which represents every season he's played as a regular. He walks at an above-average clip, coming in at 9.8% for his career and an even 10% in 2026. With patience, power, and great base-running instincts, he'd be a perfect piece to balance and reinforce the lineup.
There are a few roadblocks that will need to be dealt with first to make this potential signing possible and to get everyone in the best position to succeed.
In order to sign Randy Arozarena, the Red Sox will have to finally deal with their outfield logjam
It feels as if we've been discussing Boston's outfield logjam forever. It was a topic of conversation at last year's trade deadline, and wasn't dealt with. It seemed as if flipping an outfielder over the winter would've been a great way to solve another need on the roster over the winter, but Craig Breslow had other ideas.
To be fair, having the depth worked out relatively well this season, as guys like Anthony and, to a lesser extent, Yoshida both missed a lot of time. But at a certain point, everyone's going to be healthy, and there won't be enough at-bats to go around. Worse, there are too many overlapping skill sets for the crowded unit to successfully coexist.
While there are moves that can be made, the unfortunate thing is that they also represent a missed opportunity. Duran is the most obvious odd man out, but after his spectacular 2024, he was merely good in 2025 and has been atrocious offensively in 2026.
At the same time, ditching Yoshida would be ideal. Arozarena isn't a great defensive outfielder, posting -2 defensive runs saved and -5 outs above average this season. That's not horrible enough that he'd need to DH full-time, but having him in the field as little as possible would be ideal. That's tough with Yoshida on the roster.
The market isn't going to be strong for an injury-prone, DH-only player with little pop, so trading Yoshida would not be an easy task. Cutting him would require the Red Sox to eat $18 million in 2027. There's a case to be made that the roster spot is worth paying that price, but will Boston see it that way?
Had the Red Sox not dragged their feet in dealing with this clear roster construction issue for so long, they could have flipped these players for real assets to either beef up the farm system or satisfy an area of need. Instead, if they want to go after a perfect free-agent fit, they're going to have to take the loss on some assets whose value has gone belly up. Procrastination is never a great strategy.
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