See Ya, Football: Four Red Sox Thoughts On Eve Of Spring Training

The Lombardi Trophy has been handed out, the confetti has been swept up, and the 2024-25 NFL season is in the books. We are officially on to baseball season, as the Red Sox and 29 other MLB teams gear up for one of the surest signs of spring: pitchers and catchers report.

Boston’s battery mates will report to Fort Myers, Fla., on Wednesday (Feb. 12). The first full-squad workout is still a week away (Monday, Feb. 17), but with pigskin in the rear-view, we can’t help but start thinking about hardball.

Here are four Red Sox-related thoughts to chew on as we shake off one snowstorm and prepare for another as we eagerly anticipate baseball from the Sunshine State.

Waiting on Alex Bregman
A two-time All-Star, two-time World Series champion who brings elite defense and offense to the table is still unsigned. That’s kind of a big deal. As far as we can tell, the Red Sox remain in the mix to sign Alex Bregman, but at this point, it’s impossible to say which way he’s leaning.

There’s precedent with the Red Sox taking a free agent sweepstakes deep into spring training. They officially signed J.D. Martinez in 2018 on Feb. 26. The same could certainly happen for Bregman, especially if that long-term deal he apparently covets doesn’t materialize.

If the Red Sox don’t find something that works for Bregman, it’s unclear what Plan B might be — or if one even exists. Nolan Arenado, perhaps? The lineup is still unbalanced, perhaps more so than it was when 2024 ended, with Tyler O’Neil departing and a some left-handed bats knocking on the big league door.

The future might be now
If the Red Sox don’t sign Bregman, the conversation is going to quickly shift to what the kids can do, perhaps most notably Kristian Campbell. Marcelo Mayer and Roman Anthony were also among the non-roster invitees to Fort Myers, and they’ll certainly be major focal points.

Without Bregman, though, Campbell might become the most fascinating prospect for two reasons. The first is that he could be that right-handed bat to help balance the lineup, whereas Anthony and Mayer hit from the left side. The second is that he can play second base.

As the Sox themselves noted in the press release, Baseball America made Campbell their player of the year for 2024, and The Athletic tabbed the 2023 first-rounder its prospect of the year. Baseball America opened its year by making him the No. 4 prospect in all of baseball.

Essentially calling Campbell a consolation prize if the Sox miss out on Bregman isn’t fair to the 22-year-old, but it has been a long time since a Red Sox camp opened with this much excitement about one prospect, let alone three.

Full staff
One area in which the Red Sox undeniably improved in the offseason was the starting rotation. Adding Garrett Crochet was Craig Breslow’s biggest move yet, and he comes in as a legitimate American League Cy Young Award contender. If Walker Buehler looks like the pitcher he was in October for the Dodgers, that will be another great addition. There’s at least some cautious optimism about what workhorse Lucas Gilito might provide in his first season after Tommy John surgery.

On top of that, it’s another year of development for the likes of Tanner Houck, Brayan Bello and Kutter Crawford. Don’t sleep on some of the off-field additions the Sox made to their pitching infrastructure to build on a largely successful Year 1 of the Breslow-Andrew Bailey regime.

It’s also just gonna be fun to see the bullpen videos of Crochet, whose stuff is simply filthy. He also might be a pitching savant, who certainly makes the most of his time in spring training.

The best news of all …
The jerseys don’t suck anymore! This story from The Athletic is a reminder the Nike/Fanatics uniform disaster of 2024 is behind us, and it’s a new (old) era when it comes to baseball fashion. That alone is worth celebrating.