Red Sox Miss Out on Big Pitching Upgrade as $8.6 Million Target Dealt to NL Team

The Boston Red Sox are making pitching a priority this offseason. They proved it on December 11 when they packaged four of their prized minor league prospects in a deal to get the most sought-after pitcher on the trade market, former White Sox lefty Garrett Crochet. But since then, Boston’s quest to upgrade its starting rotation has stalled.

The only subsequent addition they’ve made to a rotation that gave the team only about five innings per start in 2024 is a pitcher who may not give them any innings at all in 2025. On Friday, according to media reports, the Red Sox signed 28-year-old Patrick Sandoval who had spent his entire career with the Los Angeles Angels.

Latest Pitching Addition Unlikely to Contribute in 2025

Sandoval, according to an MLB.com report, “blossomed into a quality member of the Angels’ rotation, becoming the second-best starter behind Shohei Ohtani from 2021-23. During that time, Sandoval posted a 3.53 ERA and struck out 373 batters in 380 1/3 innings.”

The catch, however, is that Sandoval is now rehabbing from Tommy John surgery and is projected to return no earlier than several months into the 2025 season, with a likelihood that he will miss the entire campaign and remain unavailable until the start of 2026.

According to a report by the Red Sox cable television network NESN, another frontline pitcher who had been targeted for acquisition by trade for Boston is now off the board. Jesús Luzardo, a 27-year-old lefthander who pitched the last four seasons for the Miami Marlins has been traded to a top National League contender, the Philadelphia Phillies.

Former Red Sox President of Baseball Operations Dave Dombrowski now holds the same role with the Phillies, and pulled off the deal that left his previous employer in the lurch.

Hired in 2015 by the Red Sox, Dombrowski quickly refashioned a team that had finished in the American League East basement two years in a row, and led the Red Sox to three straight division championships — a feat the team had not accomplished before or since — culminating in a 108-win season and World Series championship in 2018.

But less than a year later, Dombrowski was fired. Allegedly, the reason was that Red Sox brass were unhappy that Dombrowski had stripped the Boston farm system of many of its top prospects in trades that contributed to the rapid rebuild.

Phillies Dealt High-Ranking Prospect for Luzardo

To get Luzardo from Miami, Dombrowski gave up the Phillies’ fourth-ranked prospect, Dominican shortstop Starlyn Caba, according to a report by NBC Sports Philadelphia. But in the estimation of NBC Sports reporter Corey Seidman, the sacrifice was worth it for Luzardo.

“(The Phillies) needed a fifth starter but Luzardo is much more than that, closer to a Number Two when healthy, and he said last week that he is after missing the final 3 1/2 months of the season with a back injury,” Seidman wrote. He added that Luzardo — a native of Lima, Peru, who will earned a relatively modest $8.6 million salary in 2025 — “immediately upgrades the Phillies’ rotation and takes it from one of the best in baseball to probably the best in baseball.”

Would Lazardo have made the Red Sox rotation the best in baseball? Considering the addition of Crochet and the fact that last year’s Red Sox starters posted an identical ERA to Philadelphia’s (3.81), the answer may well have been yes. But the Red Sox will never know because their former top baseball executive beat them to the punch.

Jonathan Vankin JONATHAN VANKIN is an award-winning journalist and writer who now covers baseball and other sports for Heavy.com. He twice won New England Press Association awards for sports feature writing. Vankin is also the author of five nonfiction books on a variety of topics, as well as nine graphic novels including most recently “Last of the Gladiators” published by Dynamite Entertainment. More about Jonathan Vankin