Luckily for the Boston Red Sox, their bar isn\u2019t set very high after a below average 2020 MLB season. Even though they have been able to win four World Series titles since 2004, this team is undergoing a total rebuild and it may take some time for them to be competitive again. While they may not look like a very talented team on paper, they may have some breakout players who can turn this team into a competitive one in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What Happened Last Year<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 2020 wasn\u2019t kind to the Red Sox last season. They ended the year with a record of 24-36, which was bad enough to place them last place in the American League East for the fourth time since 2010. Not only were they last in the division, but they had the fourth worst record in the entire league. Fans of the team knew it was going to be a rough year especially after they lost both Mookie Betts and Dave Dombrowski in the offseason, but it was still a tough season. They also got horrific seasons out of both J.D. Martinez and Michael Chavis, two guys who were expected to have solid years and ended up posting career worst numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Offseason Changes<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Boston was able to give themselves a ton of flexibility during the offseason. This was a result of a flurry of offseason changes that may not have any big names, but a lot of interesting ones that could end up panning out for the future of the franchise. They picked up guys like Enrique Hernandez, Garrett Richards and Hunter Renfroe among many others to try and limit the chances that underperforming players get. For example, Chavis was given so many chances despite terrible on field play because the team simply didn\u2019t have a replacement at the time, but these moves give them that change and flexibility that they desperately need. The team did lose a lot of players as well, such as Jackie Bradley Jr., Robert Stock and Dustin Pedroia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2021 Outlook<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n While the Red Sox have some intriguing names across their roster that could end up getting them a better season than in 2020, it doesn\u2019t seem likely that they will be able to make it into the postseason this year. They will need all of their pitching rotation to stay healthy and perform to the best of their ability to even be considered postseason hopefuls, due to their injury history and inconsistency it doesn\u2019t appear that will happen just yet. The loss of Bradley Jr. will also damage their defense more than they are expecting as well. In no way do they have enough firepower to compete with some of the best teams in the league like the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Diego Padres, but they also aren\u2019t nearly as talented as other teams in the division like the New York Yankees. They may not be at the bottom of the league again, but the postseason is still a distant hope for them in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pick: 4th<\/sup> In American League East<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Luckily for the Boston Red Sox, their bar isn\u2019t set very high after a below average 2020 MLB season. Even…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":16411,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[136],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16398"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16412,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16398\/revisions\/16412"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}