Red Sox among possible 'breakout teams' in 2024 per ESPN metric

Though the Red Sox offseason has so far dramatically failed to live up to the promise of going “full throttle,” there’s at least one optimistic projection for Boston heading into the 2024 season.

Amid questions about the team’s pitching, uncertainties around multiple lineup spots, and a payroll that’s expected to be smaller this year than last year, Boston fans might be forgiven for being a little short on optimism.

Yet according to a new metric created by ESPN, the Red Sox are one of several teams that could be on the verge of a breakout.

Attempting to engineer a predictive indicator from a 2023 trend — in which the Rangers and Diamondbacks reached the World Series despite having longer odds in spring training — ESPN’s Bradford Doolittle said they are “giving it a go.”

“We identified traits most associated with MLB teams who have made similar jumps (those include prospect rankings, projections, roster age, organizational record, previous leap, luck and free agent spending),” Doolittle wrote of the new model, “and combined them into a single number we’ll call The Breakout Index (BRK).”

So what does it have to say about the Red Sox?

“Boston has had a combined record over .500 from all of its minor league teams in each of the three seasons since the 2020 pandemic season,” noted Doolittle. “Our system weighs these seasons in reverse order to reflect how prospects progress toward the majors.

“The Red Sox dovetail perfectly with a three-year winning percentage progression of .588, .529 and .502,” he added. “The success of the Boston farm system is also reflected by consensus prospect rankings.”

Boston’s “BRK” score graded out to 106.5, highest among the teams that were measured. It meant that the Red Sox were placed at the top of the ESPN breakdown, and are the strongest candidates (on paper) to fulfill the definition of a “breakout.”

For reference, Doolittle explained the model’s track record when applied to prior examples.

“This initial iteration of the model produced about a 35-percent success rate in identifying past breakout teams,” he wrote. “Four of the six breakout clubs from 2023 were correctly flagged by the system.”

Exactly what this means for the Red Sox remains to be seen, as a team’s seasonal direction can be determined by so many other factors (including injuries and call-ups). Still, as Boston fails to measure up — especially in offseason moves — by more traditional metrics, it’s interesting that ESPN’s not only lists the Red Sox, but placed them first.