Do the Red Sox Believe that Driveline can Manufacture Power?
“There's a place in the game for analytics. They just shouldn't be the game" -Rod Carew
Masslive’s Christopher Smith has just written a four-part series on Driveline Baseball, the consulting firm employed by many big-league clubs. I suggest you read it and form your own opinions. To me, if you read between the lines, it really indicates how the Red Sox organization has shifted since the days of Dave Dombrowski.
If Dave Dombrowski wanted a power hitter, he went and got one. J.D. Martinez was a great pickup prior to the 2018 season. He hit .330/.402/.629/1.031 in that championship season. The Red Sox also had three more legitimate power hitters that season in Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts, and Rafael Devers.
When Chaim Bloom took over, he traded Betts and let Bogaerts walk. He replaced them with players like Alex Verdugo, Hunter Renfroe, Kike Hernandez, Trevor Story, and Masataka Yoshida, all purported to be power hitters. In reality, Devers was the only remaining power hitter. However, thanks to Smith’s articles, we now know that starting under Bloom, the Red Sox front office was changing the way it taught and valued hitting.
Kyle Boddy is the founder of Driveline. He was hired as a special advisor to Craig Breslow. In fact, the Red Sox have hired at least 10 former Driveline employees over the years, throughout all levels of the organization, starting with Chaim Bloom. Driveline doesn’t just use analytics for hitting, they analyze pitching and defense as well.
Boddy claims that Driveline’s approach to hitting is consistent with Ted Williams’ famous book, The Science of Hitting. Ted Williams last hit a baseball in 1960 so anyone today that claims they know his approach to the game by reading his book is kidding themselves. I won’t get on my soapbox (today), but Ted was much more than bat speed and launch angle. The Ted Williams Foundation characterizes his approach to hitting as “nothing short of scientific precision mixed with artistic finesse.” Well said.
Driveline’s hitting principles are centered around bat speed, pitch recognition, exit velocity, and launch angle. They want players to hit the ball in the air more consistently. Has this led to an increase in home runs for the Red Sox? If it has, it certainly doesn’t show up in the numbers. Over the last four seasons (two under Bloom and two under Breslow) the Red Sox are 18th in home runs in MLB. For 3 1/2 of those seasons, they had Rafael Devers. For the last half season without him, they were 27th out of 30 in home runs.
What About Situational Hitting?
The Red Sox were very bad with runners in scoring position in 2025. The Red Sox were very bad with RISP in 2024. The Red Sox were middle of the pack with RISP in 2023. Do the teachings of Driveline address this? I don’t know but Smith’s articles contain some quotes from MLB scouts:
“When you see it play out in games over the course of the season — a runner on third and less than two outs — hitters have a hard time coming through in that situation. That’s not what they practice.”
“Critics say a focus on advanced stats makes hitters feel penalized for flicking a single to the opposite field with a runner at third base and fewer than two outs because their batted ball quality numbers suffer.”
“Baseball people will look at that and say, ‘That’s a great job of hitting right there.’ But on the data, that’s a below-average exit velocity and likely a less-than-ideal launch angle and not pulled. So, they’re dinged for that.”
“Hitters are trained this way that exit velocity, launch angle are so important, and that’s how they’re essentially evaluated by their club, by other clubs, by the industry. You can see how shortening up and doing what the game should require may not be ideal for them. And they may say, ‘Screw it.’”
“Contact ability, ability to get on base, see pitches, grind at-bats, none of that comes with exit velocity,” Mike Hazen said. “So, I’m sure that there’s some undervaluedness to that. It’s probably easier for us to see objective exit velocity from an evaluation standpoint.”
Based on this, it makes sense that the Red Sox are bad at situational hitting because it is clearly not emphasized.
Can Driveline Manufacture a Power Hitter?
There were two elite power hitting free agents on the market this offseason, Pete Alonso and Kyle Schwarber. They both signed for around 5 years/$150M. The Red Sox weren’t interested. They did, however, offer Alex Bregman (by no means an elite power hitter) 5 years/$165M. They could have had Alonso or Schwarber for less money.
Craig Breslow has said that he’s confident there will be power that emerges from the current roster. One example he uses is Caleb Durbin. Breslow thinks Durbin can hit for some pull-side power at Fenway Park. Durbin ranked in the 95th percentile in squared-up percentage (33.3%) last season when he finished third for the NL Rookie of the Year.
Durbin hit 11 home runs in 2025. Statcast overlayed all of his 2025 batted balls onto Fenway Park and concluded that 5 of them would have been home runs. So, have any of the players on the current roster become power hitters under the Driveline methodology? None that I can see. They have maybe 4 players that have 20 home run potential and one (Wilyer Abreu) that might have 30 HR potential, if he stays healthy.
Based on early FanGraphs ZiPs projections, the Red Sox are not projected to have a 20 home run hitter in 2026. That’s probably a bit harsh. I think they will have 2 or 3, but their lineup is one of the poorest in MLB when it comes to power. Did Craig Breslow pass on signing an elite power bat because he thinks he can manufacture one or two? It sounds crazy but you have to conclude that is the case. Everything the Red Sox have done in the past few seasons tells us that they think analytics will make players better. In some cases, I’m sure that is true, but creating a slugger out of whole cloth? Sorry, no.