Closing Thoughts on the 2026 Red Sox

For all the twists and turns of the 2026 Red Sox season, the end result was frustratingly similar to 2025.

A second consecutive Wild Card showdown with the Yankees at once proved that the Red Sox were still no match for their archrivals, and, in particular, Cam Schlittler and Max Fried.

The Yankees’ top two arms once again carved up the Red Sox’s overwhelmed lineup, and while Payton Tolle and Sonny Gray held their own through the first half of each contest, Boston’s vaunted bullpen proved incapable of keeping the games within arm’s reach.

​We can argue about the playoff format that forced the 87-win Red Sox to play the 93-win Yankees while the 84-win White Sox got to play the 81-win Astros, but the reality is that the Red Sox were going to have to get through the Yankees at some point. To win a World Series, you need to beat the game’s best teams, and the Red Sox just weren’t good enough.

​There are some who will say that this series proved that the Red Sox’s 32-5 stretch was a fluke, but there is nothing that occurred over those 48 hours in New York that wasn’t foreshadowed during the regular season, and more specifically, September.

​As good as Tolle and Gray were this season, they profile more as really good No. 2 starters than true aces at this point in their careers, which is why they didn’t earn the leash Garrett Crochet earned in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series last season.

​The back-end combination of Garrett Whitlock and Aroldis Chapman had been the team’s calling card all year, but the middle-relief bridge had collapsed with injuries to Tyron Guerrero and Justin Slaten as well as the late-season struggles of Erik Miller.

​As a result, Whitlock was forced to enter into a bases-loaded, no-out situation in the bottom of the sixth with the Red Sox already trailing 3-1, and he only fanned the flames of the red-hot Yankees offense. By the time Chapman finally trotted out of the bullpen in the bottom of the eighth inning, the game was already well out of hand.

​Finally, there is the offense, a streaky unit all season that had collapsed in September. Their 71 runs scored during the month ranked last in MLB, 18 fewer than the 29th-ranked Angels. The hope was that the return of Willson Contreras and Ceddanne Rafaela would help the Red Sox recapture their summertime form, but Schlittler and Fried quickly and decisively proved that would not be the case.

​Of course, the same thing could be said after last year’s postseason, which raises the question of why it wasn’t addressed in the offseason. To his credit, chief baseball officer Craig Breslow did strike gold with his acquisition of Contreras, who finished second in the American League in OPS and reached base in all four plate appearances in Game 2 despite playing with a severely bruised right hand.

​Outside of Contreras, however, the offense posed little threat to the Yankees’ league-best pitching, a common theme even during the Red Sox’s best regular season stretches. No other player posted an OPS within even 100 points of the slugging first baseman, leading to an offense that ranked 22nd in runs and 26th in home runs.

​For a team that plays half its home games at Fenway Park, that simply isn’t good enough. While it’s fair to say that injuries to Contreras, Rafaela, Roman Anthony, Curtis Mead and Masataka Yoshida played a part in the offensive struggles, so too did some of the decisions that Breslow made over the last calendar year.

​Choosing to trade for Caleb Durbin (101 OPS+) after missing out on Alex Bregman (124 OPS+) may end up being the better long-term move, but it significantly hampered the offense in 2026. The same can be said about the decision to hold onto Jarren Duran, who saw his stock fall even further during a season in which he slashed just .207/.266/.361.

​No matter how good the pitching and defense are, the Red Sox are going to find themselves in the same position if they don’t take drastic measures to improve the offense. After all, the 2026 Red Sox allowed their fewest runs per game since 1968, and all it got them was another quick exit in the postseason.

​This offseason will mark a true inflection point in the Craig Breslow era. The team’s incredible summer turnaround justifiably bought him more time, but the end result of the season was unacceptable, especially for a team that pushed its chips into the middle of the table with the Adley Rutschman trade.

​It has now been five long years since the Red Sox hosted a postseason game at Fenway Park, the team’s longest stretch since the 1980s, and the excuses Breslow had in the past are no longer valid.

​He now has a handpicked coaching staff, including a manager who made a number of curious bullpen decisions in his postseason debut. The ill-advised Yoshida and Story contracts he inherited will expire after the 2027 season, freeing up $43 million from two players who combined for 0.9 bWAR this year.

​The competitive window that began when the Red Sox traded for Crochet after the 2024 season will reach its apex in 2027. Ranger Suárez will be 31. Contreras will be 35. Chapman will be 39. Crochet will be 27. Rutschman will be 29 and entering his last year of team control.  

​The luxury of hope is something the Red Sox can’t afford. They cannot hope that Story repeats his 2025 season in which he outperformed so many underlying metrics. They cannot hope that Duran magically reverts to his 9.0-bWAR 2024 form. They need sure things, whether that be free agents like Seiya Suzuki and Randy Arozarena or trade targets like Jeremy Peña or Elly De La Cruz.

​The 2026 Red Sox deserve a lot of credit for digging themselves out of the grave, particularly in the face of an avalanche of injuries, but these two games in New York proved just how much work needs to be done to get back to seriously competing for the World Series.

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