There have long been rumblings about what Craig Breslow and the rest of the Boston Red Sox front office might do about the roster’s loaded outfield. In 2025, the primary ‘five-man rotation’ of Jarren Duran, Ceddanne Rafaela, Wilyer Abreu, Rob Refsnyder, and eventually Roman Anthony combined to produce an electric display of offensive pop and defensive efficiency.
Rafaela and Abreu were Gold Glovers last season, and The Boston Herald’s Gabrielle Starr reported in October that the defensive unit in the Fenway grass last season was perhaps the best in major league baseball. The current roster also features Masataka Yoshida, an outfielder who has been shoehorned exclusively into the DH role, and Kristian Campbell, who will join the outfield mix after a poor showing at second base last year.
This construction would run things back, keeping the core components of 2025’s outfield lineup intact, but Yoshida claiming the DH spot will almost surely have repercussions on the team’s hunt for a right handed power bat, something that has revealed itself as a missed opportunity during the 2025 winter meetings. Beyond logjams in the lineup card Alex Cora will present to umpires throughout next season if things hold steady, there’s another disaster possibly looming on the horizon for the Sox if Breslow continues to insist on carrying an outfield stable of 5+1.
Holding onto too much outfield talent may come back to bite the Red Sox
Breslow said at the Winter Meetings: “The bar we’re going to hold is really high, because each of those guys is capable of contributing multiple wins to our team,” when speaking about potential outfielder trades.
It’s true that Duran offers elite outfield arm value, baserunning value, and delivers huge numbers in his average exit velocity and bat speed. Rafaela won the 2025 Fielding Bible Award while leading all center fielders with 20 DRS, and Abreu is a back to back Gold Glove winner in right with a bona fide cannon for an arm and 30-plus home run power. All that’s before even considering the impact of Boston’s newest star in Anthony, who made a serious run at Rookie of the Year before ending his season a month early.
Breslow appears content to keep the same group in the dugout in 2026, but that looks increasingly likely to backfire. This is a talented bunch, but it’s one that’s unsustainable for a few reasons. Cycling the group through the DH spot is an option to keep all four talented defenders fresh, but that requires the team to deal with Yoshida’s now-apparent lack of ability to play the field. The team could trade him to free up the lineup slot, but an aging contact hitter without the raw power of a Kyle Schwarber or even someone like Ryan O’Hearn or Yandy Diaz would demand cash to come along with him.
The Boston brass rightly holds its outfield group in high esteem, but it seems that it might be overvaluing the players’ trade value (and especially Duran’s) perhaps due to emotional attachments. Duran has been a much-talked about trade candidate for the better part of two years. He’s playing on team-friendly financials and has been forced out of his best position by an even more magnificent center field defender in Rafaela. But Duran regressed last year after a transcendent 2024. His trade value may sink even lower in ’26, leaving Boston with the same problem next winter as all of their outfielders, including Yoshida, remain on the books entering 2027.
It would be painful to part ways with any of the four studs we’ve come to love watching out in the grass, but maintaining the status quo will only exacerbate a problem that has been entirely fixable and foreseeable for two whole years while potentially diminishing the possible return.