121 losses?! The numbers behind the White Sox’s season of shame
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Bradford Doolittle, ESPN Staff Writer
The 2024 Chicago White Sox now stand alone in baseball’s hall of futility — 121 losses and counting, a staggering total too extreme to completely grasp. It’s surreal. It’s jaw-dropping. And if it had not actually happened, you might think it was impossible.
Believe it or not, this season across MLB is one of relative parity, a general regression toward the middle after a period of unusual polarization in the sport. At least that’s true at the top of the standings. For the first time since 2014, there isn’t going to be a 100-win team this season. Since 2017, there has been an average of three 100-win clubs per season.
But you won’t find parity on the South Side of Chicago. That the White Sox would set the mark in such a context underscores how remarkable it is that they’ve done what they’ve done.
That number — 121 — is bad enough, but of course Chicago has a few more days to add to it. The final number will hang like an albatross around everyone associated with the team forever, as 120 has for the 1962 New York Mets over the past six-plus decades.
The record loss total for the White Sox is the headliner, but it’s also an avatar for a whole slew of incredible numbers and the rampant dysfunction that has fueled them. Some are more or less trivial, but still pretty incredible. Some are explanatory, telling us a bit about how the White Sox have done something that should not be possible.
Here are 12 numbers — beyond 121 — that help explain the 2024 Chicago White Sox.
81.7%
The 1962 Mets lost 120 games, but, remarkably, they were fun. Even as the losses piled up, their fans embraced the expansion team. Manager Casey Stengel kept the baseball writers entertained. One of them, Jimmy Breslin, wrote a classic book about the season (“Can’t Anyone Here Play this Game?”).
There hasn’t been anything fun about this year’s White Sox, and it’s hard to see anyone wanting to write a book about them. Their fans, as they say, have stayed away in droves. The White Sox social media team threw up its hands. The ineptitude gathered so much momentum that a kind of fatalistic schadenfreude set in. When the club reached 114 losses, the Chicago Sun-Times ran a poll, asking, “At this point, are you rooting for them to break [the loss record]?”
Out of 1,450 respondents, 81.7% said they were.
7
Starting pitching has been the foundation for the White Sox’s success this season. You might scan that and see it as pure snark and, in a sense, that’s what it is. Still, Chicago’s starters as a group haven’t been tragically bad. It’s a bad rotation, but White Sox starters rank 24th in fWAR and 27th in FIP. Other teams have been worse.
Can you imagine how bad this would be if the White Sox had not gotten occasionally competent starting pitching from the likes of Erick Fedde, Garrett Crochet and Jonathan Cannon? Well, you really don’t have to, because we’ve seen that team since the All-Star break.
Fedde’s seven wins are going to lead the team. That’s a remarkably low number but not unprecedented. Just last season, JP Sears and Shintaro Fujinami led Oakland with a mere five wins apiece. What’s remarkable is that Fedde is going to lead the White Sox in wins even though he was dealt at the MLB trade deadline, two months before the end of the season. His last win for Chicago was on July 10.
Fedde and Crochet rank one-two on the team in bWAR and have been flat-out good for most of the season. Crochet was a leading Cy Young candidate into June, but to protect his arm (and trade value) the White Sox curtailed his workload. He hasn’t pitched more than four innings since June 30, a span in which he has started 14 times. Well, you can’t win if you don’t go five, so Crochet’s win total has been frozen at six since he beat the Red Sox on June 7.
So, by default, the long-gone Fedde is your 2024 White Sox win champ. With seven.
12
As mentioned, the season will end with Fedde and Crochet finishing 1-2 in bWAR and wins on the 2024 White Sox. They will do those things even though neither has won a single game for Chicago since July 10. Zero. From the two best pitchers on the team.
Since Fedde’s last Chicago win, every team in baseball has gotten at least 25 wins from its starting pitchers. Except for the White Sox. Since Fedde’s last South Side victory, Chicago’s starters have gone 12-52.
This number has more than trivial value because it in part explains how the White Sox’s descent to this historic nadir accelerated as the season progressed. As bad as Chicago was, for a while it could count on being competitive at least two out of every five times through the rotation. With Crochet being forced to turn things over to a historically awful bullpen after, at most, four innings, and with Fedde donning a Cardinals uniform, those two days were lost.
20
No one has suffered the ramifications of the White Sox’s lack of options more than right-hander Chris Flexen. This figure represents the number of consecutive starts he made in a game his team went on to lose. That’s a modern record.
We could have also gone with 23. That number represents Flexen’s streak of starts without earning a winning decision, a streak that was finally snapped Thursday.
Flexen has an ERA+ of 83 (100 is league average), yet he’s going to lead the White Sox in innings pitched (160). He finished just two innings short of qualifying for the ERA title. He wouldn’t get that kind of volume on a better team, but there are pitchers this season with worse ERA+ figures and more innings. Through it all, he has been healthy and one of Chicago’s five best available starters.
Like the team around him, Flexen has been a nasty combination of subpar performance and bad luck. He has had some decent outings, including 10 quality starts. His rate of quality starts (33%) is below average, but over 30 games that should have yielded much better than a 3-15 mark. According to Baseball Reference, Flexen is tied with Fedde and Colorado’s Austin Gomber for the most games (7) in which he has exited with a lead that was blown by the bullpen.
The bottom line is what it is: Flexen finished 2024 with three wins over 30 starts. In all of baseball history, among pitchers with at least 30 starts, only three have fared as badly. Two of those were Jerry Koosman (1978 Mets, also 3-15) and Spencer Turnbull (2019 Tigers, 3-17).
The third and possibly most apt historical comp for Flexen’s record is Jack Nabors, who went 1-20 for a team the White Sox ought to keep in mind over their remaining games. We’ll get to them.
35%
That’s the White Sox’s save percentage. Yes, that 35% mark, built upon an MLB-high 37 blown saves, is the worst in baseball and it’s not close. Miami is second worst at 53%. The MLB average is 63%.
The number gets worse the more you contextualize it. According to Stathead, it’s the worst figure in a full season of the expansion era (since 1961). Since World War II, only the 1949 Cincinnati Reds (33.5%) were worse. But let’s face it, this is far more dreadful than that because bullpens play such a major role in team performance in today’s MLB.
Chicago’s relief ERA (4.77) is 29th in the majors, with only Colorado’s Coors Field-affected figure worse (5.30). The bullpen has walked 327 batters — 57 more than any other club. Only one bullpen (Toronto) has yielded more homers (82). Chicago’s starters have departed with 27 leads that were then blown by the relief staff. That’s five more than any other club.
Finally, as an homage to our Fedde note: Chicago’s save leader is Michael Kopech, with nine. No one else has more than two. And, like Fedde, Kopech was traded away at the deadline. His last White Sox save came July 10 — in relief of Fedde’s final Chicago win.
9
Triples mean nothing from an evaluative standpoint. While it’s true that fast runners tend to get more of them than slow runners, ballpark factors loom almost as large. On top of that, Guaranteed Rate Field is a poor park for triples. About the only way to get one in that park is to poke a ball into the right-field corner and hope it rattles around a bit.
Still, even in this meaningless, random category, the White Sox stand out for their failure. Chicago has nine triples all season, four fewer than any other team and fewer than or equal to the number of triples Corbin Carroll, Jarren Duran, Bobby Witt Jr., Elly De La Cruz and Mike Yastrzemski have by themselves.
Again, this is a fluke category, but it illustrates one thing about this team: It’s not just bad. It’s boring.
$3.37M
According to salary data from Spotrac, the White Sox have baseball’s 18th-ranked total payroll allocation ($133.8 million). They’re on pace for 40 wins, a cost of $3.37 million per victory.
For as few wins as they have, the White Sox have spent more on a per-win basis than any other team but the Mets. The Yankees ($3.26 million) and Mets ($3.54 million) are sandwiched around Chicago on this leaderboard. But their costs are justified in that those clubs are, you know, winning games and playing on into October (or coming very close).
The three highest-paid White Sox and their 2024 bWAR: Yoan Moncada, $24.8M (0.3); Andrew Benintendi, $17.1M (minus-0.9); Luis Robert Jr. $12.5M (1.3).
.2353
That’s the winning percentage of the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics — the club for whom Nabors toiled — taken to four decimal places. That’s the worst in modern baseball history. The A’s went 36-117 and played a tie game, which isn’t included in their percentage calculation, as it would be in the NFL, for example. But this matters to us in 2024.
Against all odds that mattered to us in 2024, until the White Sox improbably won three straight over the Angels this week. Now the worst winning percentage the White Sox can finish with (39-123, or .241) is safely above the 1916 Athletics’ mark. Hey, at this point every positive matters.
In many respects, the 1916 A’s are very much the historical antecedent of the 2024 White Sox. Like Chicago, that Philadelphia team was very good only a couple of years prior to its nadir, having played in the 1914 World Series. Like the White Sox, that good team was subsequently dismantled to horrific results.
The 1962 Mets were an expansion club, so at least they had a built-in excuse for their foibles. Heck, the all-time loss champ, the 1899 Cleveland Spiders — who went 20-134 the season before what we consider the modern era — get a pass. The Spiders were owned by the Robison family, who also happened to own the NL team in St. Louis. After the 1898 campaign, they transferred all the good players in Cleveland over to St. Louis. That’s not something that could happen these days.
Getting to 39 means the White Sox and their remaining proud fans get the straw-grasping option of pointing at Connie Mack’s worst team and claiming that, indeed, there was a team even worse.
2
That’s the number of managers Chicago has had this season, with Grady Sizemore taking over for Pedro Grifol on an interim basis in August. As bad as things were for Grifol (28-89), Sizemore has fared even worse (11-32) given the hollowed-out roster he has to work with.
Sizemore is the 43rd manager in White Sox history, a total that includes two-game stints for interim skippers Don Cooper (2011) and Doug Rader (1986). In what might be a permanent reminder of the 2024 ChiSox, Grifol (.319) and Sizemore (.256) rank 42nd and 43rd on the franchise list for manager winning percentage.
This will remain the case even if Chicago wins its final two games.
Minus-21.5
It’s not like the White Sox entered the season with high expectations. As of March 19, as spring training began to move toward the start of the regular season, their over/under for season wins stood at 61.5, per ESPN BET. That’s a 100-loss team, and given the nature of forecasts, that is a pretty stunning baseline. Still, Oakland (57.5) and Colorado (60.5) were even lower.
The silver lining in low expectations is that they afford the opportunity to over-deliver. Indeed, the A’s are on pace for 70 wins, quite a jab in the eye at those early forecasts. The Rockies have been mostly as advertised but even they are on pace for 62 wins — a minor triumph.
The White Sox’s pace of 40 wins is 21.5 below their baseline expectation entering the season. No one else has even come close to that kind of showing. The next-biggest negative deviation from the over/under is 16.5 by the Miami Marlins.
In a nutshell, this encapsulates just how stunning this level of losing is for any team, much less the White Sox. Given some of the lowest expectations in the sport, Chicago has still managed to be baseball’s biggest disappointment.
Well, that is unless you are one of the 81.7% of respondents to that Sun-Times poll who hoped this would come to pass.
Minus-7
The White Sox’s run differential is bad. Really bad. They’re at minus-311 runs, on pace to finish at minus-317 on the season. The modern era record is minus-349, a mark set by the 1932 Red Sox and challenged by last year’s Athletics (minus-339). Chicago would have to really get hammered from here to break the record but, well, let’s just say that this is a barrel with no apparent bottom.
As it stands, the White Sox’s run differential is representative of a team that ought to win 47 games over a 162-game campaign, putting Chicago on track to finish seven wins short of its run profile. That’s the biggest disparity in baseball, with the Cubs (5.3) finishing a distant second — giving Chicago a firm grip on a leaderboard a city doesn’t want to be on even once.
That seven-win shortfall might lead the majors this season, but it’s not a record or even that historically unusual. It’s a typical number for the unfortunate leader on this leaderboard in a given season. While bad luck doesn’t entirely explain this gap — check out that section above on the bullpen — misfortune does tend to play a large role in such disparities.
So it’s not misleading to claim that not only have the White Sox been baseball’s worst team, they’ve also been the unluckiest. This is evident in other ways:
• Using injury data from Baseball Prospectus, I calculate an in-season injury index for each team based on how much time players have missed and how good those players are. The league average is 100. The team with the best injury luck has been Toronto, with an index of 116.3. The Jays have had some key injuries (Jordan Romano and Bo Bichette, to name two) but the team’s overall volume of games missed has been low.
At the other end of the spectrum are the Dodgers at 84.3. L.A.’s injury woes, particularly when it comes to its rotation, have been well chronicled. The White Sox have an injury index of 89.9, ranking 27th. So, not only have Chicago’s key contributors struggled, they’ve also been injured a lot. There’s a joke about bad food/small portions in there somewhere.
• The Statcast leaderboards also underscore Chicago’s misfortune. White Sox hitters have the biggest disparities between actual and expected results, based on quality of contact, average, slugging and WOBA. It’s a clean sweep.
Meanwhile, Chicago pitchers are only tied for the biggest disparity between actual and expected WOBA allowed.
Look, you don’t get to 121 losses by being merely bad, though obviously that is a prerequisite. You also have to be unlucky. Across the board, Chicago has labored in futility and misfortune alike.
In short, everything that could go wrong has gone wrong.
274
Monday, Sept. 30, will be the 274th day of the year 2024 on the Gregorian calendar. The MLB regular season will come to an end. Come next spring, the White Sox begin a new season with a clean slate, every one of those 121 (and counting) losses confined to the history books.
For the White Sox, this winter and the seasons to come will determine whether getting a fresh start is, for them, actually a good thing. They can at least take solace in this: Historically speaking, it can’t get worse.
Can it?
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Kristen Shilton
There is an art to becoming a full-time NHL starting goaltender.
There is art, too, in being a successful NHL backup.
It requires embracing the unknown. It’s preparing to play without actually playing. There are long stretches of no puck touches — but the expectation of delivering your best at a moment’s notice.
That kind of pressure isn’t for everyone. But Edmonton Oilers‘ goaltender Calvin Pickard isn’t just anyone. He has forged a career excelling in secondary roles, the classic blue-collar contributor exemplifying work ethic and a straightforward mentality. One day at a time. One game after another.
It’s not easy. Pickard just makes it seem that way.
“I guess you’d say he’s one of the rare goalies,” Oilers forward Evander Kane said. “He’s just a normal guy. He’s really popular in [our] room.”
And how. Pickard has helped save Edmonton from back-breaking deficits in this NHL postseason not once, but twice. And Pickard could be on track to keep the Oilers alive again as they face elimination in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final against the Florida Panthers on Tuesday (8 p.m. ET, TNT/Max).
That’s as pressure-packed as it gets, yet Pickard’s most recent efforts showcased a goalie at his peak.
Pickard entered the Final as Edmonton’s No. 2 behind Stuart Skinner. He looked on as the Oilers split the series’ first two games, and then entered troubled waters. Skinner started again in Game 3, and Florida pounded Edmonton 6-1. Coach Kris Knoblauch replaced Skinner with Pickard late in that debacle, where all Pickard could offer was cleanup duty.
Edmonton moved on to Game 4 with a 2-1 series deficit, carrying an undeniable whiff of fragility that was about to be painfully exposed.
Knoblauch passed over Pickard for Skinner as his starter. The result was disastrous. Skinner gave up three goals on 14 shots in the first period, for an .824 save percentage. Edmonton limped off the ice down 3-0 and Knoblauch had to do something.
Enter Pickard.
The 33-year-old took over Edmonton’s crease and backstopped them to a shocking comeback as the Oilers scored three second-period goals for a 3-3 tie heading into the third. Pickard was excellent holding off the Panthers’ attack with tough, critical stops that gave the Oilers a chance to offer some goal support at the other end. And Edmonton’s eventual 5-4 victory in overtime would not have been possible without Pickard’s 22 saves.
2:24
How ‘clutch’ Calvin Pickard helped spur Oilers to Game 4 win
Steve Levy and Kevin Weekes break down the Oilers’ comeback win in overtime in Game 4 to even the series with the Panthers.
It was simple enough then that when the series returned to Edmonton tied 2-2 going into Game 5 on Saturday that Pickard would have at least 24 hours notice of his next playing time. That it was happening in the Cup Final could rattle other goalies who hadn’t actually started a full game in five weeks.
But then again, Pickard isn’t a typical backup. He’s built differently.
“I guess you could look at [Game 5] as the biggest game in my life, but the last game was the biggest game in my life until the next one,” Pickard said. “It’s rinse and repeat for me. It’s been a great journey; I’ve been to a lot of good places. Grateful that I had the chance to come to Edmonton a couple years ago, and this is what you play for. I’m excited.”
The game itself didn’t go to plan for Edmonton. The Oilers fell behind early — again — and this time no number of eye-popping stops by Pickard (including a massive one on Carter Verhaeghe in the first period) could save Edmonton from itself in a 5-2 loss.
Pickard’s stat line was weak — giving up four goals on 18 shots for a .778 save percentage — but Knoblauch wasn’t convinced he was the problem. Nor would Knoblauch commit to him for Game 6.
“I’m not going to make that decision right now after a tough loss tonight,” the coach said after Game 5. “But from what I saw, I think Picks didn’t have much chance on all those goals. Breakaways, shots through screens, slot shots. There was nothing saying that it was a poor performance.”
It was Pickard’s first loss in the postseason, a testament to his body of work. It wasn’t so long ago he was in control of the Oilers’ crease. A stronger team effort in front of Pickard could have him shining there again Tuesday; Edmonton has been outscored 15-8 in its past three games, a frustrating reality given the Oilers’ depth of offensive talent and defensive capabilities.
“The quality of opportunities were really good [in Game 5], so there’s no fault at Calvin at all on any of those goals,” Knoblauch said. “When the pressure’s not on [the goalies] that they have to make every single save to keep this close or keep us ahead [it’s better]. It’d be nice to get some goal support. [Game 5] was a case where we were having difficulty generating offense. It’d be nice to have that lead and play knowing that they have to open things up when they’re trailing.”
THE OILERS WERE in a bad spot midway through the first round.
They’d entered the playoffs among the field’s Cup favorites after making the Final a year ago, falling there in Game 7 to the same franchise they’re battling now. The Oilers rebounded in a strong regular season, finishing third in the Pacific Division with 101 points.
It was worrisome then that they started the postseason with a thud, falling behind 2-0 in their first-round series against the Los Angeles Kings. Skinner was Edmonton’s starter at the time, and had given up 11 goals in those two defeats. Pickard had watched (almost) all of it happen from the bench, save for a brief appearance late in Game 2.
Knoblauch tapped Pickard to start in Game 3. Cue another comeback.
Pickard helped the Oilers reel off four straight wins to vanquish the Kings and send Edmonton to the second round. He peeled off another pair of wins against the Vegas Golden Knights to spot Edmonton a 2-0 series lead — only to sustain a lower-body injury in Game 2 that would cut his magical postseason run off at 6-0-0 with an .892 save percentage and 2.76 goals-against average.
Edmonton again turned to Skinner, who responded with a sensational run of his own leading the Oilers through their Western Conference finals series against the Dallas Stars. The now-healthy Pickard was more of a spectator again. Biding his time had become second nature.
“The last couple of years, [Skinner] has played much more than I have,” Pickard said. “So, practice time is huge for me. [Our staff] has me dialed in when I’m not playing and doing different drills to replicate situations in games, and for when that chance comes.”
Pickard has learned how to leverage his reps, perceiving each one as meaningful even when the outcome is a foregone conclusion.
“Getting the time in Game 3 [of the Final] at the end, even when it was out of hand there [with the score], it’s still good ice time for me to get out there and see game action,” Pickard said. “That propelled me to be ready for Game 4. [Any of that] practice time’s huge.”
It’s also fitting for a goalie like Pickard — who can revel entering a rout — to be on the path to a potentially distinctive feat. According to ESPN Research, the last time multiple goalies on a Cup-winning team recorded decisions in a Final for non-injury related reasons was when the Boston Bruins alternated between Gerry Cheevers and Eddie Johnston in 1972. Cheevers started Game 1, Game 3 and the clinching Game 6 in that series.
Skinner and Pickard are also only the second tandem in NHL history to have each recorded at least seven victories in a single postseason, joining Marc-Andre Fleury (nine wins) and Matt Murray (seven) during the Pittsburgh Penguins‘ Cup run in 2017.
But Pickard’s road here wasn’t quite like his predecessors — or his current goalie teammate.
Pickard was drafted by Colorado in the second round at No. 49 in the 2010 NHL draft. His first and only season as a starter for the Avalanche was in 2016-17, when he filled in for injured Semyon Varlamov.
Colorado exposed him that summer in the expansion draft and Pickard was selected by Vegas, with the idea he’d be Fleury’s backup. But the Golden Knights also selected Malcom Subban off waivers and put him behind Fleury instead. Pickard was then put on waivers and picked up by the Toronto Maple Leafs, who sent him to the minors.
From there, the New Brunswick, Canada, native kept moving around, waived by Toronto and then Philadelphia before a brief stint in Arizona. In July 2019, Pickard signed as a free agent with the Detroit Red Wings — his fifth team in two years — and still couldn’t take hold in the NHL. He toggled between the Red Wings and the American Hockey League for three seasons.
In July 2022, Pickard arrived in Edmonton … sort of. He signed a two-year, two-way deal with the club and spent his first season in the AHL. Pickard finally saw sustained NHL play the next season as the Oilers grappled with struggling starter Jack Campbell, giving Pickard his most games in the league (23) since 2016-17. That was enough to keep him on as Skinner’s backup this season.
The rest, as they say, is history. Pickard’s patience through the process has impressed those teammates now relying on him to pull them through to a Cup title.
“He’s been doing this for a long time, he has a ton of experience and been to a lot of different dressing rooms,” Kane said. “That can help you along when you do come on to different teams, making a little bit of an easier transition. Now you’re just seeing that off-ice translate on to the ice with his performance, and how much he’s helped us to where we are here today … in the Stanley Cup Final.”
If people weren’t paying attention to Pickard when he stepped in for Skinner against the Kings, there’s no doubt all eyes are on him now. It’s attention that Pickard has earned.
“[Pickard is] someone who’s just kind of stuck with it all along and he’s been a true pro and a great person all the way through,” Edmonton captain Connor McDavid said. “I think good people get rewarded and he works as hard as I’ve seen. Couldn’t be more deserving.”
KNOBLAUCH ISN’T ONE to be rushed.
He has been cagey about naming a starter throughout the Final. That will hold true again for Game 6.
“[It’s] a conversation with the staff, obviously our goaltending coach, Dustin Schwartz, but with all the assistants, the general manager,” Knoblauch said. “[We’ll] kind of weigh in how everyone feels and what’s best moving forward. It’s not an easy decision. We’ve got two goalies that have shown that they can play extremely well, win hockey games and we feel that no matter who we choose, they can win the game.”
Pickard’s numbers in the series (.878 SV%, 2.88 GAA) are stronger than Skinner’s (.860 SV%, 4.20 GAA) and they are on par for the entire postseason (Pickard holds an .886 SV% and 2.85 GAA to Skinner’s .891 SV% and 2.99 GAA). Their records, though, are quite different: 7-1 for Pickard, 7-6 for Skinner.
So, who gives the Oilers their best chance to win Game 6 and drag Florida back to Edmonton for a second straight Game 7 finale between these teams in the Cup Final?
If Pickard does get the call, it will be a culmination of 10 years of consistent effort to be trusted when there’s no tomorrow. There’s only the present moment — where the right backup goalie has always been trained to stay ready.
1:26
Weekes perplexed by Oilers: ‘They look like a shell of themselves’
Kevin Weekes calls out the energy level by the Oilers in their Game 5 loss to the Panthers in the Stanley Cup Final.
The San Francisco Giants acquired three-time All-Star Rafael Devers from the Boston Red Sox on Sunday in a stunning trade that sent a player Boston once considered a franchise cornerstone to a San Francisco team needing an offensive infusion.
Boston received left-handed starter Kyle Harrison, right-hander Jordan Hicks, outfield prospect James Tibbs III and Rookie League right-hander Jose Bello.
The Red Sox announced the deal Sunday evening.
The Giants will cover the remainder of Devers’ contract, which runs through 2033 and will pay him more than $250 million, sources told ESPN.
The trade ends the fractured relationship between Devers and the Red Sox that had degraded since spring training, when Devers balked at moving off third base — the position where he had spent his whole career — after the signing of free agent Alex Bregman. The Red Sox gave no forewarning to Devers, who expressed frustration before relenting and agreeing to be their designated hitter.
After a season-ending injury to first baseman Triston Casas in early May, the Red Sox asked Devers to move to first base. Devers declined, suggesting the front office “should do their jobs” and find another player after the organization told him during spring training he would be the DH for the remainder of the season. The day after Devers’ comments, Red Sox owner John Henry, president Sam Kennedy and chief baseball officer Craig Breslow flew to Kansas City, where Boston was playing, to talk with Devers.
In the weeks since, Devers’ refusal to play first led to internal tension and helped facilitate the deal, sources said.
San Francisco pounced — and added a force to an offense that ranks 15th in runs scored in Major League Baseball. Devers, 28, is hitting .272/.401/.504 with 15 home runs and 58 RBIs, tied for the third most in MLB. Over his nine-year career, Devers is hitting .279/.349/.509 with 215 home runs and 696 RBIs in 1,053 games.
Boston believed enough in Devers to give him a 10-year, $313.5 million contract extension in January 2023. He rewarded the Red Sox with a Silver Slugger Award that season and made his third All-Star team in 2024.
Whether he slots in at designated hitter or first base with San Francisco — the Giants signed Gold Glove third baseman Matt Chapman to a six-year, $151 million deal last year — is unknown. But San Francisco sought Devers more for his bat, one that immediately makes the Giants — who are fighting for National League West supremacy with the Los Angeles Dodgers — a better team.
To do so, the Giants gave a package of young talent and took on the contract that multiple teams’ models had as underwater.
Harrison, 23, is the prize of the deal, particularly for a Red Sox team replete with young hitting talent but starving for young pitching. Once considered one of the best pitching prospects in baseball, Harrison has shuttled between San Francisco and Triple-A Sacramento this season.
Harrison, who was scratched from a planned start against the Dodgers on Sunday night, has a 4.48 ERA over 182⅔ innings since debuting with the Giants in 2023. He has struck out 178, walked 62 and allowed 30 home runs. The Red Sox optioned Harrison to Triple-A Worcester after the trade was announced.
Hicks, 28, who has toggled between starter and reliever since signing with the Giants for four years and $44 million before the 2024 season, is on the injured list because of right toe inflammation. One of the hardest-throwing pitchers in baseball, Hicks has a 6.47 ERA over 48⅔ innings this season. He could join the Red Sox’s ailing bullpen, which Breslow has sought to upgrade.
Tibbs, 22, was selected by the Giants with the 13th pick in last year’s draft out of Florida State. A 6-foot, 200-pound corner outfielder, Tibbs has spent the season at High-A, where he has hit .245/.377/.480 with 12 home runs and 32 RBIs in 56 games. Scouts laud his command of the strike zone — he has 41 walks and 45 strikeouts in 252 plate appearances — but question whether his swing will translate at higher levels.
Bello, 20, has spent the season as a reliever for the Giants’ Rookie League affiliate. In 18 innings, he has struck out 28 and walked three while posting a 2.00 ERA.
The deal is the latest in which Boston shipped a player central to the franchise.
Boston traded Mookie Betts to the Dodgers in February 2020, just more than a year after leading Boston to a franchise-record 108 wins and a World Series title and winning the American League MVP Award.
Devers was part of that World Series-winning team in 2018 and led the Red Sox in RBIs each season from 2020 to 2024, garnering AL MVP votes across each of the past four years. Devers had been with the Red Sox since 2013, when he signed as an international amateur free agent out of the Dominican Republic. He debuted four years later at age 20.
Boston is banking on its young talent to replace Devers’ production. The Red Sox regularly play four rookies — infielders Kristian Campbell and Marcelo Mayer, outfielder Roman Anthony and catcher Carlos Narvaez — and infielder Franklin Arias and outfielder Jhostynxon Garcia are expected to contribute in the coming years.
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Alden Gonzalez
Shohei Ohtani will make his long-awaited return to pitching on Monday night in a matchup against the division-rival San Diego Padres, the Los Angeles Dodgers announced.
Ohtani, 21 months removed from a second repair of his ulnar collateral ligament, will be used as an opener, likely throwing one inning. Because of his two-way designation, Ohtani qualifies as an extra pitcher on the roster, giving the Dodgers the flexibility to use a piggyback starter behind him.
That is essentially what will take place in his first handful of starts — a byproduct of the progress Ohtani has made in the late stages of his pitching rehab.
Ohtani, 30, initially seemed to be progressing toward a return some time around August. But he made a major step during his third simulated game from San Diego’s Petco Park on Tuesday, throwing 44 pitches over the course of three simulated innings and compiling six strikeouts against a couple of low-level minor leaguers.
Afterward, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said it was a “north of zero” chance Ohtani could return before the All-Star break. When he met with reporters prior to Sunday’s game against the San Francisco Giants — an eventual 5-4 victory — Roberts said it was a “possibility” Ohtani could pitch after just one more simulated game.
After the game, Roberts indicated the timeline might have been pushed even further, telling reporters it was a “high possibility” Ohtani would pitch in a big league game this week as an opener, likely during the upcoming four-game series against the Padres.
“He’s ready to pitch in a big league game,” Roberts told reporters. “He let us know.”
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