Full Strength Is a Myth. Ready Might Be Enough.
The Red Sox are almost there.
Not mathematically. Not officially. There are still games to win and enough time remaining for something strange to happen, because this is baseball and because these are the Red Sox.
Strange is sort of their thing.
But October no longer feels like some distant possibility we are afraid to mention. After taking two of three from Kansas City, Boston is 82-68 and holding the second American League Wild Card spot. They have put themselves in position to play postseason baseball.
Now comes a different question:
What exactly will this team look like when it gets there?
“Full strength” is a phrase we hear all the time heading into the playoffs. Teams want their lineup healthy, their rotation aligned and their bullpen rested. Everything organized perfectly before the first pitch of the Wild Card round.
That sounds nice.
It also almost never happens.
The Red Sox have spent most of this season adjusting to whatever bad news showed up next. Garrett Crochet went down. Roman Anthony disappeared from the lineup for nearly four months. Trevor Story missed more than three months. Willson Contreras recently strained his hamstring. Adley Rutschman has been managing an elbow issue. Ceddanne Rafaela is on the injured list.
And yet, here they are.
Maybe they won’t be at full strength in October. But after everything that has happened, we might need to redefine what full strength even means for this team.
The biggest concern is Crochet.
There is still hope that he can return, but nobody should expect the 2025 version of Garrett Crochet to suddenly walk out of the bullpen and start dominating playoff games. He has not pitched in a major-league game since April. His comeback has progressed to bullpen sessions, with facing hitters potentially next, but time is getting very short.
Even if he returns, he will almost certainly be a reliever. Maybe he can give them an inning. Maybe two. Perhaps he becomes a weapon against a dangerous stretch of left-handed hitters.
Anything beyond that feels unrealistic.
That doesn’t mean his return would be insignificant. Imagine getting through six innings of a playoff game and having Garrett Whitlock, Crochet and Aroldis Chapman available. There are worse ways to try to protect a lead.
But the Red Sox cannot build their October plan around the possibility of Crochet saving them. At this point, anything he provides has to be viewed as a bonus.
Fortunately, the starting rotation no longer needs him to be its centerpiece.
Sonny Gray has become the veteran stabilizer this team desperately needed. He has been through playoff races before. He understands how to control a game when every pitch starts to feel twice as important. He doesn’t need to overpower everyone. He just needs to keep the game from speeding up around him.
Ranger Suárez may be finding his best form at the perfect time. He has now completed seven innings in consecutive starts, including seven innings of one-run baseball against Kansas City. His postseason experience matters, too. When a playoff game becomes messy, Suárez has already lived through that pressure.
Then there is Payton Tolle.
Honestly, what more can we ask from him?
Tolle gave Boston six scoreless innings Sunday, struck out seven and opened the game with an immaculate inning. Nine pitches. Nine strikes. Three strikeouts. Against a team trying to spoil Boston’s September.
He didn’t look overwhelmed. He didn’t look like someone waiting for the moment to become too large. He looked like he belonged.
That does not guarantee anything in October. A rookie starting a playoff game is still a rookie starting a playoff game. Fenway will be louder, every baserunner will feel dangerous and one mistake can turn into three runs before anyone has time to settle down.
Still, Tolle has earned the opportunity. A postseason rotation of Gray, Suárez and Tolle isn’t the one anyone predicted in April, but right now it looks capable of keeping Boston in a short series.
The concern is what happens if one of them falters.
Jake Bennett has shown enough to remain part of the conversation, but he is also being asked to navigate innings and pressure he has never experienced. Tanner Houck is working his way back through a rehab assignment. Crochet’s availability remains uncertain. The Red Sox have options, but many of those options come with health questions, workload questions or both.
Then there is the lineup.
Roman Anthony is back, which should immediately make everything feel better. Except it isn’t quite that easy.
Anthony missed almost four months. Before the injury, he wasn’t having the season many expected. He returned with only 30 major-league games behind him this year, and now Boston needs him to rediscover his timing while the season is rushing toward its finish.
The talent is unquestionable. We saw it again Sunday when he delivered the two-out single that put Boston ahead. That is the kind of at-bat they will need in the playoffs, because October games are rarely won by producing 14 hits and cruising. More often, it’s one pitch, one mistake, one hit with two outs.
Anthony is capable of changing a game. The question is whether there has been enough time for him to become that player consistently again.
Trevor Story presents a similar problem.
Story is healthy enough to play, but returning from sports hernia surgery after such a long absence is not the same as being completely back. His rehab numbers were not good. His major-league production before the injury wasn’t especially good, either.
Still, he had two hits Sunday and drove in two important insurance runs. That is encouraging.
The Red Sox don’t need Story to carry the lineup. They need professional at-bats, dependable defense and the occasional extra-base hit in a big spot. If he gives them that, he makes the team better.
If they spend October waiting for the old Trevor Story to suddenly return, they could wait themselves right out of the playoffs.
Contreras coming back is a much clearer positive. He leads the team in home runs and RBIs, and his return changes the middle of the order immediately. He also reached base three times in his first game back, which is about as reassuring as it gets after a hamstring injury.
But hamstrings are tricky. One hard turn around first base can change everything. The Red Sox will have to decide how aggressively to use him while also understanding they cannot afford to protect him forever.
Rutschman is another reason for optimism, even with the elbow concern. Adding him at the deadline gave Boston a proven hitter, an experienced catcher and another player who understands the atmosphere of the American League East. His two-homer return to Baltimore offered a glimpse of how much damage he can do.
But can he stay behind the plate every day? Can the elbow handle the workload? And if he needs time at designated hitter, how does that affect Contreras, Anthony and everyone else who may need a partial day off?
Those aren’t devastating problems. They are the kind of problems playoff teams would rather have than not have. Still, Chad Tracy has to get the combinations right.
That may be the biggest challenge of all.
The players who kept this season alive cannot simply be forgotten because familiar names have returned. Nick Sogard has contributed. Caleb Durbin has contributed. Mickey Gasper came out of nowhere and provided some of the best at-bats on the team before being sent back to Worcester. Isiah Kiner-Falefa has helped. These were not placeholder performances.
They were the reason there was still a season to save.
Boston has more talent now, but fitting everyone together is not the same as collecting the most recognizable names. October rewards the hot hand. It rewards defense. It rewards players who can move a runner, draw a walk or deliver a single against a reliever throwing 99 miles per hour.
Sometimes the best postseason lineup is not the lineup that looks best on paper.
The bullpen remains one of the clearest reasons to believe. Whitlock and Chapman give the Red Sox a legitimate late-game combination, and Brayan Bello has found success in relief. If Crochet or Houck can join that group, even in a limited role, Boston could shorten games considerably.
There is some danger there, though. Erik Miller has elite strikeout ability, but the walks remain frightening. Chapman has been excellent, but no reliever is automatic in October.
One bad pitch can undo eight brilliant innings.
That is not a Red Sox problem. That is a postseason problem.
So, are they going to be at full strength?
Probably not.
Crochet may be limited or unavailable. Rafaela’s timetable matters. Anthony and Story are still trying to regain their rhythm. Contreras has only just returned. Rutschman’s elbow needs to be managed. The young starters are entering unfamiliar territory.
But maybe full strength was never the standard this team needed to reach.
The Red Sox were 10-17 when Alex Cora was fired. They have gone 72-51 under Chad Tracy. They didn’t rescue their season because everything finally went according to plan.
They rescued it by finding new answers every time the original answer disappeared.
Tolle became more than a prospect. Gray became the ace while Crochet recovered. Suárez steadied himself. The bullpen carried close games. Unexpected players kept the lineup functioning. Anthony and Story returned to a team that had learned how to survive without them.
That should count for something.
This is not a perfect team. It can still go cold offensively. The defense can make a routine inning feel like an emergency. The rotation has youth and uncertainty behind its first few options. A few important players are healthy, but perhaps not completely whole.
Those concerns are real.
So are the positives.
Boston can pitch. It can protect late leads. It has more depth than it did a year ago. It has veteran hitters, young talent and a rookie starter who appears completely unimpressed by the size of the moment. It has spent five months playing games that felt like they needed to be won just to keep the season from slipping away.
Now the Red Sox have to finish the job.
They may not arrive in October at full strength.
But after everything this team has survived, maybe the more important question is whether they will arrive believing they can beat anyone.
Right now, I think they might.
Written by: Tim Hourihan
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