When the offseason started, the Red Sox sounded like a team ready to make multiple significant additions to a rotation that struggled with performance and durability last season.

The way it has played out so far, free agent Lucas Giolito has been the club’s only acquisition, while Chris Sale was subtracted in a trade with the Braves for promising infielder Vaughn Grissom.

The way the Red Sox put it, they haven’t been able to “line up” with top targets, none bigger than Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who signed a $325 million deal with the Dodgers. 

Now the club is talking about a season in which the individual and collective improvement from its younger core of pitchers will be key to the team’s overall success.

“At the end of the day, the [Garrett] Whitlocks, the [Kutter] Crawfords, the [Tanner] Houcks, the [Brayan] Bellos, they have to take a step forward,” said manager Alex Cora. “Regardless of if you signed the best pitcher in the world, they need to take a step forward.”

You can also add Josh Winckowski to the group Cora mentioned.

What this means is that the team’s biggest pitching acquisition over the winter might end up being its new pitching coach, Andrew Bailey, who drew rave reviews for his performance in that role with the Giants the last four seasons. 

One thing that became clear when the energetic Bailey spoke at Red Sox Winter Weekend a few days ago is that he has a clear vision of how to get the most out of Boston’s pitching staff.

“I think my goal is to set expectations, hold players accountable to those expectations as a group, and I want us to be viewed industry-wide as, ‘Come to the Boston Red Sox, they know how to pitch,’” said Bailey. “I think if you look at the Giants and the Twins and Seattle and Tampa [Bay], that’s where we're gonna get to. When you come to Boston or when you're gonna go play the Red Sox, these guys are gonna come at you, throw strikes with really nasty stuff and throw hard in the zone.”

In recent years, the Red Sox lost their way as a pitching program. Bailey plans on restoring order. He has no issues expressing his mission statement or how he plans to execute it.

“Obviously, for us, outs are made in zone. We want to help educate our pitchers on what makes them unique relative to other pitchers around the league,” said Bailey. “I think that there's specific qualities amongst pitchers and understanding what makes them a Major Leaguer from a pitch-quality standpoint -- it could be execution -- then also just creating accountability and some structure around strike-throwing in general, using your best pitches as often as possible, understanding that outs are made in zone, and just looking at some of the low-hanging fruit on each individual, and then kind of going from there.”

The 39-year-old Bailey, who was a reliever for the Red Sox in 2012 and 2013, is the type of guy who could talk about pitching all day. Pitch usage is a topic that really gets his juices flowing.

“Yeah, totally. There's also addition by subtraction as well,” he said. “So [it’s] understanding that one of your pitches may play better than another and understanding that spin in zone generally produces better outcomes, understanding for the history of baseball that fastballs are hit the hardest and generate the most slug over a long period of time.

“So, leveraging your strengths, knowing your strengths, knowing your routines, dialing in specific skill acquisition, development, and understanding of how the body moves, structure and routines, plyo programs, and all of that stuff -- blending it together to create an understanding of what the athlete’s identity is, that’s really big.”

Heading into the season, the Red Sox aren’t likely to make anyone’s Top 10 list for best pitching staff on paper.

But Bailey won’t use that as an excuse. Instead his plan is to defy the prognostications of the “experts.”

“I'm excited about our group,” he said. “If our industry doesn't [end up viewing] our pitching staff individually at higher tiers, or certain guys going into free agency or going into arbitration [don’t view us that way], I just didn't do my job.

“I think that there's talent in our rotation, there’s opportunity, and helping them understand who they are and giving them identities and creating some accountability is going to be kind of our name of the game. I'm excited about this group. We want to get to a place where we don't have to supplement our Major League roster with large investments. Hopefully, we can do that. That’s the goal.”

For the first four months of 2023, Masataka Yoshida was a standout performer for the Red Sox in his rookie season, producing an .843 OPS to go with 12 homers and 52 RBIs. But he wasn’t nearly the same player in August and September, as evidenced by a .648 OPS with only three homers and 19 RBIs.

Hitting coach Peter Fatse has reason to believe that Yoshida can be a key contributor over the full season in ’24.

“I think a lot of it comes down to last year, he was experiencing a bunch of firsts, right? I think not only was it the league itself, but the travel, a lot of different culture elements to being here,” said Fatse. “I think he's probably a lot more prepared for that the second time around. Ultimately, too, I think the World Baseball Classic and the length of the season, he was playing for a long period of time. And I think ultimately, that probably influenced how he trained this offseason as well in terms of preparing for 162-plus this year. I think he's just putting his body in a better position to accommodate the season.”

Fatse would like to see Yoshida regaining his opposite-field stroke and taking advantage of the Green Monster.

“There's an opportunity for him to use the wall to his advantage. I think as he slowed down at the end of the year and got out of his legs, he kind of lost that backside approach,” Fatse said. “And again, that's something we're going to be looking to keep at the forefront of his development throughout the year. I think with the added strength and just the physicality that he's been working through this offseason, that’s going to pair well.”

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