The Red Sox Have A Middle Infield Problem

This past offseason the Red Sox shamefully let Xander Bogaerts get away to join the San Diego Padres. At the time, our editor Dan asked if I wanted to write a reaction piece, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. As many of you know, either from listening to “The Red Seat” podcast or following my writing, he was far and away my favorite player on the team. Furthermore, I had spent so much time, both on podcasts and in writing, advocating for his importance and return to the team. I had said all that I could say about Bogaerts and when it became clear he was not coming back, I didn’t have anything left to give.

Recently, Chris Cotillo of MassLive caught up with Bogaerts for a quick ten minute interview. In the interview he confirmed again much of what we already knew about the fruitless negotiations he had with the team. He was initially hopeful, even excited, to see what they would offer last spring before the start of the 2022 season. He was let down to the degree of being insulted by the offer that came through as they massively low-balled the star shortstop. The Red Sox were never serious about keeping him, despite what was said publicly, and as Bogaerts said, he was prepared for it because he had seen so many talented guys who were considered either cornerstone pieces or untouchable leave for other teams or get traded. We’ve been through all this before, and Bogaerts had too.

The Red Sox opted not to replace Bogaerts with any number of the available superstar shortstops on the market. Trea Turner went to Philadelphia, Dansby Swanson went to Chicago, and Carlos Correa went many places before finally returning to Minnesota. The Red Sox were left with nothing but a broken Trevor Story and a 31-year-old Kiké Hernandez, who had never played more than 24 games at the position during his career, to hold down the most important defensive position on the field.

As we know, when Story began ramping up for shortstop duties he hurt his elbow, the same elbow Chaim Bloom knew wasn’t healthy when he signed him. Hernandez has been about as good as you could expect for a veteran who has never played the position full-time, which is to say he currently ranks last in Outs Above Average and first in errors committed at the position. We all knew this was a bad idea, which is why myself and my podcast mates, Keaton and Bob, railed against this course of action all offseason. When all of the big names were gone, we still advocated for the Sox to sign someone in the ilk of Elvis Andrus or Jose Iglesias. Sure, neither player would be an impact bat, but at least they could play the position and wouldn’t add to the long list of problems this team already had.

Moreover, the Red Sox not only bungled shortstop, but the hair-brained idea to start Christian Arroyo at second base has looked about as good as one could have predicted. While he has been totally fine defensively, Arroyo has struggled to impact the baseball at all. His line through 56 plate appearances is .189/.218/.245, and this comes with zero home runs and a hamstring that has already started barking at him. The knock on Arroyo has always been that he can’t stay healthy and projects as more of a backup middle infielder. So far he’s done nothing to prove his doubters wrong.

Since Arroyo has already missed some time and Adam Duvall is on the shelf, we’ve seen all sorts of things in the middle infield that we didn’t expect. Bobby Dalbec starting a game at shortstop? Yup, that happened! Yu Chang getting regular starts at both middle infield positions? Check! And finally, because Chang went on the paternity leave list, we got to see the major league debut of Enmanuel Valdez. Woo!! What a start to the year.

Meanwhile, Story and Adalberto Mondesi are on the 60-day IL and won’t be providing any help to this situation until June at the very earliest. David Hamilton, who is the current starting shortstop at Triple-A Worcester, does not profile as an upgrade over Hernandez, Arroyo, or Chang, and impact prospect Marcelo Mayer is still playing in High-A trying to learn his craft. Help is not on the way anytime soon.

The Red Sox shortstops have been worth 0.1 fWAR, good for just 23rd in baseball through April 24th. Likewise, the second base situation has been even worse at -0.3 fWAR, which ranks 26th in the game. Much of this was preventable and Bloom and the FSG ownership team are to blame. The Red Sox all-time leader in games played at shortstop, Xander Bogaerts, is currently hitting .330/.417/.545 with five home runs while playing plus defense for the San Diego Padres. It sure would be nice to have a guy like that.