The Boston Red Sox have been more active this offseason than in most recent years, but they haven’t been too active. Their free agent spending ranks only 11th in Major League Baseball, and all of that money, $52.3 million, has been poured into the pitching staff. They also picked up a top of the rotation starter in Garrett Crochet via the trade route.
What they have not done is add offense, though they have lost some. Outfielder Tyler O’Neill departed to the Baltimore Orioles and took his 31 home runs and .847 OPS with him, on a three-year, $49.5 million contract.
O’Neill is a righty swinger, and his departure leaves a right-handed hole in the Red Sox lineup that is dominated by left-handers such as Rafael Devers, Jarren Duran, Wilyer Abreu, Masataka Yoshida and Triston Casas.
“Given that most of the heavy lifting in the rotation is largely done, I think we’ll shift our focus to thinking about how to balance out the lineup,” Boston chief of baseball operations Craig Breslow told reporters on Monday. “We’ve talked about some right-handed bat helping to equalize the significant number of left-handed hitters that we have.”
Breslow did not specify which right-handed targets he had in mind, but one prominent Red Sox newsletter author, who writes under the name BallPark Buzz, had a trade pitch that would likely be inexpensive for the Red Sox while adding a righty hitter who has produced 43 home runs over the past two seasons, his only two full MLB campaigns.
Spencer Steer of the Cincinnati Reds is 27 years old, and was a third-round draft pick of the Minnesota Twins in 2019. The Twins traded him as minor league prospect to the Reds in 2022. The following year, after appearing just 28 games in 2022, Steer placed sixth in National League Rookie of the Year voting.
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As a home run hitter, Steer has been approximately equal at home in Cincinnati and on the road, with 24 of his 45 career round-trippers at Great American Ball Park and 21 in other parks. His career road OPS is slightly better than at home, .767 compared to .753.
For his brief career, he has averaged a 2.13 Wins Above Replacement number per 162 games. O’Neill averaged 3.46 WAR/162, but played only the outfield. Steer plays left field as well as both first and third base.
Steer is owed only $800,000 for 2025 and will not be a free agent until 2029, meaning that he could be an economical way to add that sought-after righty bat to the Red Sox lineup, all without surrendering any of Boston’s elite prospects.
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