Could the Red Sox’s Starting Pitching Rewrite Baseball History This Season?

When Craig Breslow was brought on board to resurrect the Red Sox pitching staff, many wondered just how dramatic the turnaround could be. Well, I’ve gotta say, in just a couple of offseasons, he’s blitzed through expectations, transforming the Sox’s rotation into a powerhouse. Snagging Garrett Crochet—a bona fide ace—and pairing him with all-star talents like Sonny Gray and Ranger Suárez isn’t just smart; it’s audacious. Add to that a slew of savvy depth signings and a steady stream of internal prospect growth, and what you get is something frankly unprecedented in my years as a Sox fan: a starting pitching corps with unbelievable depth.

Assuming the Sox avoid unexpected trades or injuries (and fingers crossed, no mishaps on the bikes!), they’re heading into Spring Training flaunting a whopping TEN pitchers ready for the big leagues. That alone should turn some heads. Sure enough, FanGraphs has already pegged Boston’s starting pitchers as the top dogs in baseball when it comes to fWAR—a stat any savvy analyst keeps close.

But projections, as handy as they are, don’t tell the whole story… They’re blunt instruments that often miss crucial subtlety. Take Johan Oviedo and Patrick Sandoval, for example: the numbers say they’ll pitch only 80 and 54 innings, since they’re coming off Tommy John recoveries. Yet, anyone paying attention knows they’ll likely be good to go come spring. And the notion that Connelly Early or Payton Tolle won’t log at least 30 innings? That strains credulity.

Rather than blindly trust the crystal ball, I took a detour back in time, analyzing the past five seasons’ top starting pitching staffs by fWAR. How did these dominant rotations come together? What blueprint did they follow in constructing the game’s finest pitching? Most importantly: do the 2026 Red Sox have what it takes to join these elite ranks?

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To the extent that Craig Breslow was hired to turn around Red Sox pitching, you can’t say he that hasn’t done his job. In just two offseasons, Breslow has completely revamped the top of the Sox rotation by aggressively acquiring one of the game’s best pitchers in Garrett Crochet and two other recent all-stars in Sonny Gray and Ranger Suárez. Meanwhile, a number of depth moves combined with internal prospect development has given the Sox something I don’t think I’ve ever seen before in my lifetime as a Sox fan: a genuinely ridiculous amount of starting pitching depth.

Baring any trades or freak injuries (stay off your bikes, boys!), the Red Sox will open Spring Training with TEN MLB-caliber starting pitchers. It shouldn’t be all that surprising, then, that FanGraphs currently projects Red Sox starters to lead all of baseball in starting pitching fWAR.

Here’s how the FanGraphs projections look right now:

Projections are a useful tool. But they’re are also a blunt tool that, by design, ignores a lot of important nuance and context. Looking at the projections for both Johan Oviedo and Patrick Sandoval demonstrates this. The computer only pegs them to throw 80 and 54 innings, respectively, because they’ve both recently missed entire seasons recovering from Tommy John surgery. But we human beings know that they are both likely to be healthy at the start of spring training. Likewise, the idea that neither Connelly Early nor Patyon Tolle throws at least 30 innings beggars belief.

So, rather than look forward via projections, I decided to look backward at things that actually happened. I took a look at the five teams who led baseball in starting pitching fWAR over the last five seasons in order to determine how teams actually put together the best starting pitching in baseball. Do the 2026 Red Sox have what it takes to join this list?

2025: Philadelphia Phillies, 21.5 WAR

Starters who made 30 starts: 2
Starters who made 20 starts: 5
Starters who made 10 starts: 6
Total starters: 10

How did they do it?

When I first started this exercise, I figured the answer to this question would almost always be “depth.” After all, this is The Age of Tommy John, and baseball as an institution seemingly has absolutely no idea how to prevent or limit pitching injuries. It would be smart to assume, then, that whichever team has the best starting pitching in any given year is the team that has the deepest starting pitching.

The 2025 Phillies, though, belied that assumption. With the exception of Aaron Nola, who struggled at the start of the season before missing significant time with a rib cage injury, the 2025 Phillies rotation was remarkably healthy. In fact, the team essentially used only six starting pitchers all season. And, importantly, those starters were really, really good. Four Phillies starters finished in the top-12 for fWAR in all of baseball, led by Christopher Sanchez, whose 6.3 fWAR was third in all of baseball. And, yes, the guy who was 12th in baseball in starting pitching fWAR (but only fourth on the Phillies, lol) is now on the Red Sox.

So how did they do it? Health and a rotation filled with aces.

2024: Atlanta Braves, 17.4 WAR

Starters who made 30 starts: 1
Starters who made 20 starts: 5
Starters who made 10 starts: 6
Total starters: 13

How did they do it?

Once again, look to the Injury List. The 2024 Braves had 5 pitchers who made at least 21 starts. Unlike the 2025 Phillies, though, the Braves only had one ace in the rotation. Chris Sale won the NL Cy Young after posting 6.4 fWAR, while the Braves other four primary starters all finished between 1.1 and 3.5 fWAR.

Of course, there’s something else to note about the 2024 Braves rotation: it didn’t include Spencer Strider, who made just two starts before going down for the year. So how did the 2024 Braves put together the best starting staff in the game? By beginning the season with two aces and then getting good health from their solid but unspectacular group of mid-rotation arms when one of those aces went down.

2023: Philadelphia Phillies, 17.4 WAR

Starters who made more than 30 starts: 3
Starters who made more than 20 starts: 4
Starters who made more than 10 starts: 6
Total starters: 11

How did they do it?

The 2023 Phillies looked more like the 2024 Braves than the 2025 Phillies: one ace at the top (Zack Wheeler, 5.9 fWAR), followed by a solid group that stayed healthy: Aaron Nola, 3.8 WAR; Taijuan Walker, 2.4 WAR, Ranger Suarez, 2.4 WAR, Christopher Sanchez, 1.8 WAR. Note, also, that having three pitchers who made 30 starts makes this rotation a big time outlier.

2022: Houston Astros, 19.2 WAR

Starters who made 30 starts: 1
Starters who made 20 starts: 5
Starters who made 10 starts: 6
Total starters: 8

How did they do it?

Guys, I’m starting to think health has a lot to do with starting pitching success. Once again, we see a team that essentially used only six starters for the whole season. And, once again, we have a rotation that was led by an ace at the top. In this case it was Justin Verlander, who put up 6.1 WAR after missing the entire season the year prior. Unlike the 2024 Braves and 2023 Phillies, though, Verlander had a 1b in Framber Valdez, whose 4.4 WAR was good for 11th in all of baseball. The rest of the 2022 Astros rotation was filled out by solid but unspectacular performances by Christian Javier, Luis Garcia, Jose Urquidy, and Jake Odorizzi.

2021: Los Angeles Dodgers, 20.8 WAR

Starters who made 30 starts: 2
Starters who made 20 starts: 3
Starters who made 10 starts: 7
Total starters: 19

How did they do it?

Holy freaking depth! Three-fifths of the planned 2021 Dodgers rotation — Clayton Kershaw, Dustin May, and Trevor Bauer — all missed significant chunks of the season. Kershaw was sidelined for two months in the middle of the summer. May went down for the year after making just five starts. And Trevor Bauer missed the final three months of the season after he was suspended for being a piece of shit. And the man who started the year as the team’s sixth starter, Tony Gonsolin, also had two lengthy stints on the IL.

The Dodgers dealt with these absences by moving David Price from the bullpen to the rotation in the middle of the season (he would go on to start 11 games, providing 0.8 WAR in those starts), trading for Max Scherzer (who was outstanding in his 11 starts for the team, putting up 2.9 WAR), and using a lot of openers.

When fans and analysts talk about the importance of starting pitching depth in contemporary baseball, the 2021 Dodgers are the type of team they’re thinking of. But it’s important to note that this rotation was anchored by two aces at the top, as Walker Buehler and Julio Urias each started over 30 games and finished fourth and seventh, respectively, in starting pitching WAR.

So what needs to happen for the 2026 Red Sox to have the best rotation in baseball? The health of Garrett Crochet is the most important factor here, obviously. Each of these five teams had at least one pitcher who compiled at least 5 fWAR for the year. For as deep as the Red Sox pitching is, Crochet is probably the only player on the Red Sox currently capable of doing that. If he goes down, the Sox have no chance of having the best rotation in baseball, no matter how much depth they have.

Second, this list shows us that, despite all the emphasis on depth, the best rotations tend to use essentially only six pitchers over the course of the season. This isn’t to say that depth is overrated — the 2024 Braves performing as well as they did despite losing Spencer Strider shows us that it’s not. But it does mean that it’s really hard to have an elite rotation if you’re forced to rely on your depth too much. The 2021 Dodgers are very much the outliers here.

So, to have the best rotation in baseball, the Sox will likely need (1) at least one ace at the top of the rotation, and (2) 3-4 other starters who stay healthy and post around 2-3.5 WAR. It’s in this second factor that the Sox’ depth comes into play. If Sonny Gray has a disappointing season (not an unreasonable thing to worry about as he’s 36-years-old), can Patrick Sandoval replace his innings with the near-all-star level pitching he provided from 2022 through 2024? If Ranger Suarez or Brayan Bello goes down for the year (and you know someone will!) can Connelly Early or Payton Tolle step in and step up?

We’ll find out the answer to the question posed in this headline soon enough. But the mere fact that we can genuinely ask it is a wonderful thing.