{"id":99394,"date":"2025-04-18T21:17:14","date_gmt":"2025-04-19T01:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=99394"},"modified":"2025-04-18T21:17:35","modified_gmt":"2025-04-19T01:17:35","slug":"red-sox-struggling-defensively","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/04\/18\/red-sox-struggling-defensively\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Sox Defensive Struggles Key to Middling Start"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Boston Red Sox entered 2025 poised to improve defensively over last season\u2019s dismal results. But an MLB-worst 20 errors, .973 fielding percentage, and .657 defensive efficiency have <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/04\/15\/red-sox-hottest-coldest-players-start-2025-season\/\" target=\"_self\">contributed to a slow start<\/a>. Now, the team many experts predicted would make the playoffs and potentially win the AL East merely hold a 10-10 record.<\/p>\n<h2>Red Sox Struggle To Improve Defensively<\/h2>\n<p>In 2024, the Boston Red Sox\u2019s .981 fielding percentage tied with the Washington Nationals for next to last in MLB. Their 115 errors were likewise second worst. The Miami Marlins outdid them in both categories. However, Boston\u2019s 1,449 assists were good for sixth best and the exceptional defense of right fielder Wilyer Abreu won the rookie a Gold Glove Award.<\/p>\n<p>Just before spring training, the Red Sox <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/02\/12\/alex-bregman-red-sox\/\" target=\"_self\">signed<\/a> reigning Gold Glove third baseman <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/03\/06\/alex-bregman-could-be-red-sox-leader\/\" target=\"_self\">Alex Bregman<\/a>. Viewed as a significant defensive upgrade over <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/04\/01\/looking-into-rafael-devers-early-struggles\/\" target=\"_self\">Rafael Devers<\/a>, Bregman won the starting spot at the hot corner and Devers moved to designated hitter.<\/p>\n<p>Through 19 games, Bregman is tied for second among all MLB players with four errors, two behind Cincinnati Reds shortstop Elly De La Cruz. Fellow All-Star third baseman Jos\u00e9 Ramirez of the Cleveland Guardians also has four errors. In his first 19 games last season, Devers committed one error and only tallied 12 all year.<\/p>\n<p>Left fielder Jarren Duran, second baseman Kristian Campbell, first baseman Triston Casas, and catcher Blake Sabol have each committed two errors in 2025. And a quarter of the team\u2019s current total occurred during an 11-1 away loss to the Chicago White Sox on April 11.<\/p>\n<p>The subpar play in the field by the Red Sox has resulted in a defensive efficiency a full .100 below the league-leading Reds and well below the .705 league average. Their fielding percentage ranks .019 below the MLB-best St. Louis Cardinals. However, Boston has also turned 23 double plays \u2014 one behind the league-leading Los Angeles Angels.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Tom Caron and Jim Rice called out the Red Sox defense after Boston committed 5 errors in the 11-1 loss. <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/5lIfKVDspe\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/t.co\/5lIfKVDspe<\/a> <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/Q366pCs7oj\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/Q366pCs7oj<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/awfulannouncing\/status\/1910896698840195387?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">April 12, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h3>Better Days Ahead<\/h3>\n<p>Fortunately, history suggests that Bregman will soon settle down in the field. Over 142 games last season, he only committed 10 errors. Plus, he\u2019s never had more than 15 in a year \u2014 which occurred over 160 games in 2023.<\/p>\n<p>Duran is likewise coming off a terrific defensive year, logging a .984 fielding percentage and merely six errors over 160 games. However, five of those errors were committed in left field, where he played only 83 games last year and looks to start the large majority of his games in 2025.<\/p>\n<p>As for the other Boston players with multiple errors, Campbell hasn\u2019t had one since April 8 and the rookie sports a respectable .964 fielding percentage. Both of Sabol\u2019s errors came on catcher\u2019s interference in the aforementioned April 11 loss \u2014 his only start thus far. The Red Sox have been leaning on Carlos Narvaez behind the plate while Connor Wong is out with a broken finger. They also signed two-time All-Star <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/04\/10\/yasmani-grandal-free-agent-signs-red-sox\/\" target=\"_self\">Yasmani Grandal<\/a> to a minor league deal.<\/p>\n<h3>Changes Coming At First Base?<\/h3>\n<p>But more frequent changes could be coming at first base. Despite manager Alex Cora\u2019s pre-season insistence that he wouldn\u2019t platoon at the position, Casas\u2019 struggles at the plate have forced his hand.<\/p>\n<p>In 22 at-bats, Romy Gonz\u00e1lez is slashing .409\/.480\/.591 with three RBI. Casas has knocked in the same number of runs while hitting .172\/.243\/.266 across nearly three times as many plate appearances. Despite a pair of three-game hitting streaks, Casas remains stuck at one home run, which he slugged on April 3 in Baltimore.<\/p>\n<p>And while the sample size is small, Gonz\u00e1lez has also outperformed Casas in the field. In four games at first base, Gonz\u00e1lez has a perfect fielding percentage with no errors. Casas boasts a very respectable .986 fielding percentage along with his two errors.<\/p>\n<p>Gonz\u00e1lez is also the only player to fill in for Bregman at third. He spelled the starter for the final three innings of an 18-7 blowout of the Cardinals on April 6, during which Gonz\u00e1lez committed his lone error of the season. He was error-free during his complete game at third during Bregman\u2019s paternity leave on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Boston Red Sox entered 2025 poised to improve defensively over last season\u2019s dismal results. But an MLB-worst 20 errors, .973 fielding percentage, and .657 defensive efficiency have contributed to a slow start. Now, the team many experts predicted would make the playoffs and potentially win the AL East merely hold a 10-10 record. Red [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5479,"featured_media":99401,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1071],"tags":[1156,6253,3029,28602,6276,2021],"class_list":["post-99394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-redsox","category-mlb","tag-alex-bregman","tag-blake-sabol","tag-jarren-duran","tag-kristian-campbell","tag-romy-gonzalez","tag-triston-casas"],"modified_by":"Lewis Masella, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5479"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99394"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99403,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99394\/revisions\/99403"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}