Red Sox Great Wants Boston To Address This On-Field Area Of Need

Red Sox great Fred Lynn, who won four Gold Glove Awards during his seven seasons with Boston, knows great defense when he sees it.

And he didn’t see anything of the sort from the Red Sox last season.

The Red Sox finished tied for last in the American League with the 112-loss Oakland Athletics with 102 errors committed and a .982 fielding percentage. Only the San Francisco Giants had worst defensive results in Major League Baseball.

The Red Sox have holes in their starting rotation and lineup going into spring training next month, but Lynn believes the organization needs to address the team’s defense above all else.

“Priority No. 1 as far an I’m concerned as a defender is make this club a better defensive team,” Lynn told The Boston Herald’s Gabrielle Starr at Red Sox Winter Weekend. “Last year, they went into the season, and to me, they didn’t have a center fielder or a shortstop. That’s not gonna really work in the middle of defense.”

The Red Sox tried tweaking their defensive alignment last season by having Kiké Hernández move from center field to shortstop to fill the void left by Xander Bogaerts, but he struggled as a full-time infielder.

Rafael Devers regressed as a fielder, too, making 19 errors — five more than he made the season before — and with a rotating cast of players at second base plus Masataka Yoshida’s subpar glove in left field, Boston’s defense suffered.

“There’s some things that the Sox need to do, just basic stuff,” Lynn told Starr. “You gotta catch the ball. They’ve had trouble making routine plays. You can’t do that. This is a ballpark where you cant make mistakes and give the other team extra outs because it will always haunt you. You can’t give the other team opportunities, and that’s what they did. It just killed ’em.”

The Red Sox looked to improve their defense this offseason by trading for two-time Gold Glove-winning outfielder Tyler O’Neill. Ceddanne Rafaela’s rise also can give the Red Sox a true defensive option in center field, especially late in games, and having Trevor Story healthy and at shortstop should be a tremendous aid to the infield as the Red Sox look to turns things around defensively.

“I know they build teams a little differently now, thinking of analytics and things, but the guts of the game? Still the same,” Lynn said. “Your catcher, shortstop and second baseman, your center fielder, these guys got to play defense. If they hit great, great. But their first priority is play defense, be a defender. They’re the anchor, that’s where most of the balls go.”