"It's complicated to evaluate a season for a lot of reasons."
No surgery for Roman Anthony. There might be surgery for Caleb Durbin. They were totally Chad Tracy's decision in those postseason losses. They aren't devaluing scouts. They do want more power. Willson Contreras and Sonny Gray are on good terms with the front office. All of these were pieces of the hour-long get-together with Craig Breslow, Chad Tracy and Sam Kennedy. But it was that one line from the chief baseball officer that best summed up the Red Sox's past, present and future.
Craig Breslow says he and Chad Tracy met with Willson Contreras for over two hours:“We actually had a great conversation, Trace and I, with Willson yesterday. We met for over two hours and we talked about a host of things, many of those I will keep private to preserve the relationship that we have. But it was incredibly constructive and covered a wide scope of things, and Willson would be the right person to ask directly but he spoke very very highly of his time here, how much he’s looking forward to 2027 and the way he and his family appreciated the Red Sox.”
— WEEI (@WEEI) October 5, 2026
Craig Breslow on how close the Red Sox are to getting to a World Series:“We have some work to do. We went to New York and frankly, we were beaten in every aspect. At the same time, there were 4-game series where we swept the Yankees. We the swept the Rays. We didn’t lose a game to the White Sox this season.”
— WEEI (@WEEI) October 5, 2026
The sentence was uttered in response to Breslow's classification of a 2026 season that ended with his team winning 87 regular-season games before being boat-raced by the Yankees, outscored 18-2 in the two Wild Card games at Yankee Stadium.
Ultimately, Breslow's perspective on what happened and how it happened is all that matters because it will shape where this team goes from here.
"First of all, because it's so long, and then you kind of divide the regular season and the postseason, and each of those leaves you with two very, very different feelings and sentiments, and also because this season in particular was incredibly unique, but we didn't capitalize on our summer success," he said. "I think is this feeling that's echoing in my head, and ultimately we fell short of the goals that we set out to accomplish. But I wouldn't want that to overshadow some of the incredible accomplishments of the players that we had, guys who who stepped up, guys that stepped in and played well above maybe what their expectations were, guys that had career years and the way that the group came together.
"But yeah, I think I'd also maybe push back a bit on, you know, this was kind of 35-ish games of excellence and 127 games of mediocrity. When you think about, or you look at the overall totality of the record from July 1 on, right? It was three months of playing, I think like a 104-kind-of-win pace. And even in September as we certainly didn't play as well as we did in August and in July, we were pretty banged up, we had a bunch of guys on the IL, we were .500. Is that good enough? No, but I think really good teams, they go 32-5 over a stretch. And teams that are mired in mediocrity over the course of the other 125, they don't. So I think this was more than just a run. I think it showed some true underlying talent. But we obviously have a lot of work to do to get where we want to go heading into 2027."
OK. That's one way to look at it.
Like so much in baseball, maybe the truth lies somewhere in the middle, which is exactly what that last month suggested when the Red Sox went 12-12 despite scoring far and away the fewest runs in Major League Baseball. But where there is no room for intrepration and really isn't all that complicated is how loud that postseason thud was for this team.
Where they landed was with an offense that felt actually worse than the previous Wild Card go-round, and a season-ending clubhouse that had the two most powerful voices on the roster - Gray and Contreras - openly questioning the organization. No matter how those answering the questions want to reflect on and revisit the entirety of his "complicated" season, it's a results business, and, thanks to those two games in New York, business remains not what the Red Sox need it to be.
It begged the question: What did they learn from the season's uncomfortable punctuation?
Breslow: "I can maybe speak at kind of a high level, and then Trace can talk to some of the details. But I think the first thing I would say about the games, those games were very, very close for the first five innings or so. They got away from us late, no doubt. And again, we own the struggles that we had in the postseason. But I know a lot has been made about this idea that we were maybe prioritizing resting players in September. We had injured players that needed to be on the IL. We wish that we were in a position to rest them by choosing which day of the week we would give them off. Unfortunately, in order to put out a functional roster, we needed to IL guys like Ceddanne (Rafaela) and Willson and (Tayron) Guerrero and others. And so injuries certainly played a role here, but when you get beat in the lopsided manner that we did, I think we have to evaluate: how do we improve our offense? How do we particularly improve our offense against elite pitching? We’re very familiar with our offensive production against pitchers that throw 95-plus and 97-plus, and I think there are ways to train that. I also think that we have to be aware of roster construction and making sure that we have a resilient offense."
Tracy: "I would say lessons learned, the postseason, you don't quite know what to expect. Things play out in the regular season. You fall into a rhythm. When you get there, you just don't know what's going to happen from day to day, from inning to inning, from pitch to pitch. So, broadly looking at it, just offensively was a bit of a struggle. I like Bres's point. The score of the games ended in a fashion that kind of makes it hurt more, but in both cases, you're in the sixth once, in the seventh the other, where it's a very close game, and just being able to generate more traffic and kind of threaten more broadly, I guess, is the best way to answer that offensively to maybe put them in some more difficult spots to have to navigate. We weren't able to do that, and then quite frankly, obviously, some other things went wrong and some games ended up stretching into their favor towards the end. But again, I just think broadly that the postseason typically tends to bring the unexpected."
Once again. OK. Those are some more ways to look at it.
The thing about hitting velocity is real. By many metrics, the Red Sox were the worst in baseball in this category, a reality that simply won't play in the postseason. To date, there have been 218 pitches thrown in the playoffs at 100 mph or better, which is 4.5 percent of all pitches. Last year's percentage was well above any other season since they started charting such things in 2008, coming in at 1.9 percent (277 pitches of 100 mph or better).
But swinging faster, which is the Red Sox's likely initial answer to the problem, isn't necessarily going to cure what ails them. The Rays were able to make Cam Schlittler look mortal by simply making contact, a skill-set Tampa Bay is best in MLB at. In their Game 2 win over the Yankees, the Rays swung and missed just 12 times, which was 16 fewer than the Red Sox in their Game 1 matchup against Schlittler and the Yanks.
The reality for the Red Sox is that they were very close to flipping the script on the Yankees in those games thanks to the performances of their starting pitchers, Tolle and Gray. But because of a lack of any sort of threatening presence up and down their lineup, the Red Sox suffered the same fate that had cropped up so many times before and after that 32-5 run.
When the bases were loaded for the Brewers in Game 2 of their National League Division Series against the Padres, trailing by a run with two outs and facing the best relief pitcher on the planet, Milwaukee sent up a player made for that moment: Jackson Chourio. He came through, turning around a 101.3 mph fastball from Miller for the game-winner.
The Red Sox have to find their own players who are made for that kind of moment.
The easy answer when it comes to identifying this solution is simply getting the best version of the player the club has already pushed their chips to the middle of the table for: Roman Anthony. Priority No. 1 has to be making sure the outfielder's hand is never going to be a problem again, a path Breslow and Co. clearly believe they have already started navigating.
"My understanding is that there's no surgical intervention at this point, that it's planned or that merits consideration because what you said is exactly what we've been told that we don't even know what surgery we would do," Breslow said. "But I think I think maybe the difference between what, what rest looks like in the offseason and what rest looks like in April is that Roman -- and maybe this is the word choice, but -- yes, he was trying to get healthy. But I think if you ask Roman he was trying to do everything he possible to get back on the field. When he felt comfortable and confident that he could help contribute, he pushed to get back on the field. In the offseason, you can truly say this is about getting healthy."
Anthony's health is an easy answer. The rest isn't so turn-key.
What we do know is that despite the team's World Series aspirations, and chest-thumping that it had a collective 25-20 against the remaining postseason clubs, there are more problems to solve than was certainly let on Monday morning.
Breslow was right. It is complicated. Much more complicated than the Red Sox would have hoped when predicting their October landing spot this time around.
