2 players from last year’s Red Sox team that will be missed, and 2 who won’t
At the end of the day, the Boston Red Sox managed to put together one of the best offseasons in baseball ahead of the 2025 season.
It was looking a little dicey there for a second as Alex Bregman lingered in free agency for way too long, making it seem like the Sox weren’t going to get the right power bat they needed, but Bregman eventually came through for them in the end.
All told, the Sox added 10 new players and lost six, and a few of the departed will be missed a lot more than others.
2 players from last year’s Red Sox team that will be missed, and 2 who won’t
Tyler O’Neill will be missed
The Red Sox chose not to extend O’Neill the qualifying offer (QO) last year, which made some sense seeing as he only managed to play in 113 games between dealing with a concussion, and then knee inflammation, and then a leg infection. He ended up signing a three-year, $49.5 million contract ($16.5 million AAV) with the division rival Orioles in December, so the Sox were right not to give him $21.05 million for one year.
However, it’ll be hard not to miss him when, even in an injury-shortened season, he posted a .847 OPS and hit 16 homers at Fenway, almost all of them clearly over the Green Monster. If he’d been able to stay healthy, it would’ve been a great bounce-back year after coming off of a career-worst year with the Cardinals in 2023, and the Red Sox would’ve given him that QO without a second thought.
Kenley Jansen won’t be missed
Jansen was able to do decent work with the Red Sox in his two-year stint, but he was still far from the peak he reached with the Dodgers in 2017. All told, he had a 3.44 ERA and 56 saves in Boston, which made him look like just the ghost of his former 1.32 ERA, 41-save self.
