Boston drafted Rizzo in the sixth round of the 2007 MLB Draft. Between then and now, he has put together a career that spanned nearly 15 years, hitting more than 300 home runs and driving in nearly 1,000 runs — and he did it all with teams other than the Red Sox.

Boston, of course, traded Rizzo to the San Diego Padres in the blockbuster that brought Adrian Gonzalez to the Red Sox. San Diego then flipped him not too long after, and Rizzo went on to have a fantastic career with the Cubs and Yankees. Now, as the 2025 Sox get adjusted to life without Triston Casas, could a Rizzo homecoming be in the cards?

The Red Sox say they’re happy, at least for now, with internal options, primarily Romy González and Abraham Toro. They could also change course on some past insistences about players like Rafael Devers, the prospects in Worcester or even Trevor Story. But the external option lingers, too.

Rizzo would make some sense, for a few reasons. The most important? He actually plays first base. Red Sox manager Alex Cora offered an important reminder Wednesday about the difficulty of playing the position, especially compared to the perception that it’s easy to just go out and put on a mitt. Rizzo has 14,000-plus big league innings at first base. One other sneaky advantage of Rizzo’s defensive profile? He throws left-handed. It’s a little thing, but the difficulty that comes with throwing from the right side was on display in the Red Sox infield a couple of weeks ago.

Rizzo, now 35, is no longer the defender who won multiple Gold Gloves, and his advanced numbers are trending down. Expectations would need to be tempered, but he knows the position.

Similarly, the offense didn’t look good the last time Rizzo played. He hit just .228 last season with the Yankees over 337 plate appearances. Despite playing in Yankee Stadium, he hit just eight home runs. He made a lot of contact, but just didn’t make a lot of hard contact. His batted-ball numbers, typically among at least the top two-thirds of baseball, saw a steep falloff. Typically, that sort of thing doesn’t magically bounce back. In this case, the hope probably would be Rizzo’s lengthy break might work in his favor, but that could also go the other way.

The No. 1 selling point, at least at this point in Rizzo’s career, is the intangibles. Rizzo has been lauded for his leadership and being a good teammate over his entire career. Few know that better than FSG advisor and former Cubs president Theo Epstein, as well as Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow, who worked under Epstein in Chicago. With players like Story and Alex Bregman already on the roster, veteran leadership isn’t a major concern, but a stabilizing presence like Rizzo wouldn’t hurt, either.

At this point, though, it’s all conjecture. There’s no tangible reporting connecting Rizzo to the Red Sox, and Boston is probably still better off finding a suitable in-house option, especially if Devers ends up making a successful move to first base.

But if that doesn’t happen, giving Rizzo a look would make some sense, assuming he’s willing to come full circle.