A GM’s work is never done.
The Boston Red Sox added three starting pitchers — Rick Porcello, Wade Miley, Justin Masterson — at last week’s Major League Baseball winter meetings in San Diego. Ben Cherington has since expressed satisfaction with the acquisitions, but the Red Sox general manager also acknowledged Tuesday the club will keep its eyes open this offseason for additional moves that make sense.
“Certainly (we’re going to) keep an open mind to opportunities where we’re going to work some on the bullpen. I would think we’re probably going to add to the bullpen in some ways. Probably we’re going to look to add another catcher of some kind,” Cherington told MLB Network’s Chris Russo on Tuesday. “And we’ll just keep an open mind and try to be opportunistic, generally speaking, when it comes to building the team.
“But I think we feel like we have a lot of optimism internally about what we have in place, the guys we have coming and what the team could look like at the start of 2015.”
The Red Sox now have five major league-caliber starters in Porcello, Miley, Masterson, Clay Buchholz and Joe Kelly. However, some have suggested that Boston should consider going all-out to acquire an ace. While Cherington isn’t ruling out anything this offseason, the GM said Tuesday the Sox must be mindful of where aces often come from.
“Of course, if you have a guy like that, the team benefits. There’s no question a team benefits from having a guy like that,” Cherington said. “Most of those guys that do that, including the guys that we’ve had do that, including (Josh) Beckett in 2007 and Jon Lester in 2013, most guys are in their 20s.”
Cherington discussed several other topics with Russo, including Boston’s “sincere effort” to re-sign Lester.
Thumbnail photo via Stephan Savoia/Associated Press
