4 Red Sox who will make the 2024 Opening Day roster but won’t last the season
There's a lot of room for change on an MLB roster. Players risk injury daily. A trade could occur at any given moment before the mid-summer deadline. A stint in the minors sometimes does a player good.
The Boston Red Sox — and all the other teams in the league — have a lot of work to do at spring training before Opening Day rosters are determined. And they're not always perfect.
There's next to no chance of creating a perfect roster that will go unchanged for 162 games. Yu Chang started the 2023 season as a utility player for the Sox and ended up back in the minors by the end of the slate. Tanner Houck left the squad for weeks after a baseball lacerated his cheek and fractured his face.
Fans may not think it possible now, but if the Red Sox are playoff contenders come the trade deadline the roster could change significantly. If they're not contenders, they could become sellers, and they'll have some great loaner options for teams in the race.
4 Red Sox who will make Opening Day roster but won’t last the season
Bobby Dalbec
Boston has remained confident that Bobby Dalbec could come in useful for the squad as he has before. In 2021, Dalbec hit 25 homers in 133 games, but he's never been able to replicate that production. His average in the bigs has decreased from .240 in 2021 to .215 in 2022 and it sank even lower in 2023. However his sample size of games was small last season.
Dalbec's best defensive spot is at first base, but Triston Casas has taken ownership of that position after his performance last season. The Sox also have many better bats than Dalbec. While he can swing for power, he strikes out a significant amount — his K percentages were in the bottom 2% of the league in 2021 and '22, according to Baseball Savant.
Dalbec may be banking on a utility role to keep him in the bigs this year, but Enmanuel Valdez and Pablo Reyes fared better than he in said role in 2023. Alex Cora has offered his praise for Dalbec after he spent most of last year's campaign in Worcester, but that alone won't keep him in the majors.
Kenley Jansen/Chris Martin
Both of these late-inning arms had great seasons for the Red Sox in 2023, and Chris Martin flew under the radar as one of the most underrated relievers in the league. Martin logged a 1.05 ERA last season, a career-low for the 37-year-old, and 46 strikeouts in 51.1 innings.
Kenley Jansen is coming off an All-Star season for the Sox and he's been on the trade block for a few weeks leading up to spring training. Jansen is battling lat soreness as training gets underway, which interested teams may use as a negotiating chip in any trade discussions before the season. Jansen's 3.63 ERA wasn't his best, but he still fanned 52 batters in 44.2 innings of work.
Martin and Jansen are both approaching the end of their contracts with the Red Sox. Unless Boston is a playoff contender at the trade deadline, either one of the two pitchers will likely be traded to get something for them in return as their contracts expire — it's unlikely the two aging hurlers would want to play another season in Boston where they probably won't contend for a championship.
Ceddanne Rafaela
Cora was intentionally vague when discussing Boston's 2024 center fielder before spring training opened. Jarren Duran has been involved in trade discussions and the Red Sox have a prospect waiting in the wings to potentially secure Duran's gig.
The skipper said that rookie Ceddanne Rafaela is in the running for a roster spot in center field. The organization has confidence in his defensive abilities and he's been described as "a game changer" by Cora. And with Masataka Yoshida now spending the majority of his time as the club's designated hitter, the Red Sox have space for another outfielder on the roster.
However, Rafaela's plate production isn't as highly touted as his defense. Rafaela made 28 appearances in the big leagues in 2023 and he batted .241/.281/.386 with 28 strikeouts in 83 at-bats. Naturally, he fared better in Triple-A, logging .312/.370/.618. If Rafaela makes the major league roster to begin the season, there's a decent chance that he'll need a stint in the minors to fine-tune his offense, and he may not finish the season in Boston. It feels ambitious to think he'll produce with the big-league club for the entire campaign.
Tanner Houck
Tanner Houck spent his 2023 season as a starting pitcher for the first time in his career. His stint in the starting rotation didn't serve his numbers well, and he also had his face fractured by a comebacker that shortened his season, so he's never made a full slate of starts. Houck finished the 2023 campaign with a 5.01 ERA in 106 innings.
If Houck makes the starting rotation, there's no telling what a high number of innings pitched could do to his arm. He's only started 42 games in his four-year big league career and half of them came in 2023. Houck has mostly been used as a reliever, but he's started when the squad needed him to.
Hopefully, Houck can pitch an entire season of starter innings if he makes the rotation. If he doesn't, he'd still serve as a great bullpen arm, and he'd even make a quality closer. Throwing him into the starting rotation again may be a risk the desperate-for-pitching Sox might need to take, but it may not last. If he's not capable of soaking up starter innings, there's a chance he's sought after as a reliever, which many contending teams need at the deadline.
And again, a non-contending Sox team doesn't need a glut of relief pitchers, so Boston might be inclined to trade the right-hander if the price is right.
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