The Boston Red Sox are not having the time of their lives right now. A 2-6 start to the 2026 season wasn't what the doctor ordered after a long, cold offseason, as an anemic offense has simply been unable to support a fledgling pitching staff in the early going.
While it's far too harsh to place all of the blame on Caleb Durbin's shoulders — he's just eight games into his tenure with a new team — it certainly hasn't helped matters that he's the owner of a -49 wRC+ and .195 OPS. No one is asking him to be Alex Bregman or Rafael Devers, but this level of offensive ineptitude is unacceptable.
Of course, it also doesn't help that Bregman is thriving with his new team right now. He's doing his usual thing, hitting a couple of home runs while repeatedly working professional plate appearances. The overall output (114 wRC+) isn't outstanding, but we know that Bregman doesn't need to be on an MVP-level hot streak in order to help out the entire lineup.
Bergman is off to a pretty great start, he is crushing the ball, top 10 in hard hit rate, and his eye is absolutely bonkers, a 3% chase rate so far. pic.twitter.com/hKgBDRW7y2
— Stats (@redsoxstats) April 2, 2026
Alex Bregman continues to reinforce that Red Sox made a mistake in letting him go
By this point, everyone knows how poorly the Red Sox mismanaged their third base situation over the past year. There's no use in beating that dead horse anymore. So, instead, let's live vicariously through the Cubs and enjoy the ridiculous numbers Bregman is putting up in Chicago.
The 32-year-old has always been a Statcast darling, but he's taken that to a new level this year. Through the Cubs' first seven games of the season, Breggy leads the league in chase rate (3.1%) and squared-up rate (50%). In other words, he's never swinging at pitches outside the zone, and half the times he swings he's making contact in the center of the bat. That level of bat control is otherworldly, and it's why Bregman should age more gracefully than others.
His brilliance doesn't stop there, though. As you might expect, he's walking and striking out at the same pace (four each), he's only whiffed on 13% of his total swings, and he ranks in the 95th percentile or above in both hard-hit rate and exit velocity. In other words, his solid results are completely underselling how well he's seeing the ball right now.
Would this version of Bregman change the outlook of a struggling lineup in Boston? Of course. The Red Sox could use literally any reinforcements they could get their hands on right now.
But Bregman isn't walking in that door again anytime soon (and, likely, ever). So, maybe it's best to just laugh at how good he is at this whole baseball thing while waiting for Durbin to remember how to hit the ball.