3 Red Sox Who Take the Most Blame for Disastrous Defense

One of the toughest parts about watching the Red Sox in recent seasons has been their awful defense. Far too often, they botch routine plays and give their opponents extra outs, resulting in countless losses over the last few years.

Boston’s sloppy fielding was on display again on Monday during an ugly 9-4 loss to the Astros. The Sox committed two more errors, raising their season total to 87 — most in the majors.

Unfortunately for Boston fans, it was a movie they’ve been forced to watch far too frequently during Chaim Bloom’s tenure as Chief Baseball Officer.

There are several reasons for the consistently poor defense during the Bloom era. A big one is that he’s traded or let go many of the team’s best defenders, including Mookie Betts, Andrew Benintendi and Christian Vazquez, only to replace them with subpar fielders. Another is that Bloom’s bizarre roster-building strategy often asks players to play out of position, which makes players uncomfortable and is hardly a recipe for defensive success.

While Bloom (and to a lesser extent, Alex Cora) deserve much of the blame for all the lackluster glovework lately, the players on the field are the ones who ultimately make (or fail to make) the plays. That said, here are the three biggest culprits for the team’s shoddy defense this year.

3 Worst Red Sox Defenders

1. Enrique Hernandez

Hernandez isn’t even with the team anymore, but he’s already done more than his fair share of damage to the 2023 Red Sox. Not only was he one of the worst hitters in baseball before being traded back to the Dodgers (career-low 61 OPS+), but he was also absolutely abysmal at shortstop, committing a whopping 14 errors in 64 games there before mercifully being moved from the position.

To be fair, Hernandez is not really a shortstop and should have never been asked to play there. He’s primarily an outfielder and a second baseman, but Boston put him at short after a) losing Xander Bogaerts in free agency, b) losing Trevor Story until August due to modified Tommy John surgery, and c) not replacing either of them.

While Hernandez had appeared at shortstop sporadically throughout his career, he had never played every day there. The reason why quickly became apparent as he proved to be the worst defensive shortstop in MLB. The bulk of his errors were throwing, too, which made every ground ball hit to him an adventure.

Fortunately, Hernandez is no longer playing shortstop for the Red Sox, but he shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

2. Triston Casas

Casas is a tremendous young hitter, and it’s been fun watching him make strides at the plate since his call-up last September.

Unfortunately, his fielding at first base has not improved at the same rate. In fact, FanGraphs rates him as the second-worst defender at 1B this season among qualified hitters, ahead of only Toronto’s Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

The main issue for Casas is his size. Listed at 6’5 and 244 pounds, he’s a big dude. That helps him hit for power, of course, but it also makes him painfully slow around the bag. He’s simply not quick enough to get to many balls hit his way.

The good news is that Casas is still young (23), so he has plenty of time to improve his defense. Albert Pujols is a recent example of a similarly big-bodied player whose defense improved dramatically as his career progressed. If Casas leans out a bit and keeps working on his fielding, his defense should improve a bit with time.

If it doesn’t, Boston can always just stick him at DH, but you’d typically rather have an older veteran in that spot instead of a rookie.

3. Rafael Devers

Devers has never been known for his defense, but it’s been especially bad this year. Again per FanGraphs, he rates as the worst-fielding qualified player at the hot corner this season.

Similar to Casas, part of the problem with Devers is his size. He’s a thick 6 feet tall at 235 pounds, which makes life tough at a position that demands cat-like reflexes. It also doesn’t help that he’s been sharing the left side of the infield with a brutal defender for much of the season, as we covered above.

Much of Devers’ defensive issues throughout his career have stemmed from a lack of focus, however. He tends to get lazy with his footwork, which results in errant throws across the diamond.

Devers must become more consistent if he wants to remain at third base, especially after signing a huge contract extension last winter. He graded out as a plus defender in 2019 and was decent last year, so the potential is there — he just needs to keep his head in the game.

While Devers will likely move to DH at some point during his decade-long contract extension, Boston would at least like to get a few more seasons out of him at third before that happens.

Even with their terrible defense, the Red Sox still have a winning record and are worth betting on at Caesars Sportsbook. Caesars has a brand-new welcome promo that awards you 5x the value of your first bet in bonuses. If you sign up through the exclusive Chowder and Champions link below, you will unlock a guaranteed $250 bonus. This offer expires soon though, so sign up now to cash in!