Red Sox considering six-man rotation

With Garrett crochet AND Walker Buehler added to the rotation and signed a free agent last year Luca Giolito expected to be ready for Opening Day after missing the 2024 season, the Red Sox are considering fielding a six-man rotation in 2025 according to a report from Jen McCaffrey of The Athletic.

That such a plan is being considered by the club’s front office makes sense given the way the starting corps is constructed. On paper it is an exceptionally deep group, with young people raised at home Tanner Houck, Brayan BelloAND Kutter Crawford joining the aforementioned trio as they delve into pieces like Richard Fitts, Quinn PriestAND Cooper Criswell they all remain behind the scenes as plug-and-play depth options. Beyond that group, the Red Sox have veteran weight Michael Fulmer as an initial option and have further potential options as Garrett Whitlock AND Patrick Sandoval he is expected to return from the injured list at some point during the 2025 season.

While a roster of credible MLB-caliber starters with twelve names is something most clubs around the league would be envious of, that depth could easily prove necessary for the Red Sox given the troubling injury histories at play in their rotation mix . Giolito, Fulmer, Whitlock and Sandoval will all be throwing a big league mound for the first time since undergoing elbow surgery and will certainly need to carefully manage their workloads as they get back into the grind of starting work.

Additionally, Buehler will be just a year removed from the same situation and last pitched a wire-to-wire big league season in 2021, while Crochet made 32 starts in 2024 but has nearly tripled his max workload of innings in a single season as a professional after struggling with injuries early in his career. Both pitchers may need to carefully manage their innings in 2025, particularly given Boston’s postseason aspirations and the fact that the club certainly wants to have both of them healthy and ready to go in case the club makes its first playoff run since 2021. Houck, Bello and Crawford also combined for career-high innings totals in 2024, leaving reason to consider whether the club’s entire rotation mix could benefit from the additional rest of a six-man rotation provides

The main reason why a team has pause regarding the possibility of a six-man rotation (at least for clubs that do not employ Shohei Ohtani) is the 13-pitcher limit for MLB rosters, which forces any club using a six-man rotation to be forced to field a seven-man bullpen. The additional rest between starts might allow starters to throw themselves deeper into games and make playing with a man down in the bullpen more feasible, at least in theory, but the occasional short start due to injury or ineffectiveness is inevitable over the course of a match of 162 games. season, and a bullpen with just seven pitchers forced to cover six or seven innings during an abbreviated start could be hampered for the next few games by the surprise increase in workload.

That said, the extreme depth of Boston’s potential starting options could allow the club to utilize a six-player rotation more effectively than the average club. With at least twelve pitchers potentially in play to start this season, using a handful of those arms as bullpen pieces capable of sustaining multiple innings would be one way to allow the club’s relief corps to better manage their workload despite only having seven available arms at one time. All indications are that the Red Sox are already planning to move Whitlock back to the bullpen once he’s ready to return to action, and players like Fulmer, Priester, Criswell and even Josh Winckowski they could also seamlessly move into the club’s bullpen and pitch more innings if needed.

Of course, the club’s ability to stack relievers capable of going through multiple innings in the bullpen will surely depend on the moves they make to bolster their relief corps going forward this winter. Justin Slaten, Aroldis ChapmanAND Liam Hendriks they’re all more or less guaranteed spots in the club’s Opening Day bullpen as long as health permits, and the same probably goes for lefties Justin Wilson. This would leave only three spots available in the bullpen if the club moved to a six-man rotation and if the club decided to pursue another relief addition as Tanner Scott OR Chris Martin then there would only be two spots available for traditional bullpen arms Greg Weissert OR Brennan Bernardino as well as any multi-inning options the club wishes to use.