The Red Sox made a slew of offseason moves that will almost certainly improve the team's performance in 2016. Chief among these are:
David Price,
Craig Kimbrel,
Carson Smith and
Chris Young. But—at least according to August Fagerstrom of
FanGraphs.com—it's
improvement among returning members of the team that could bring the biggest boost in performance. In fact,
FanGraphs states that Boston—along with the Washington Nationals—will enjoy the
largest gains from roster returnees in all of baseball. Leading the pack for the "prodigal" Red Sox is
Hanley Ramirez—with an expected
extra WAR of +3.9. Not far behind is
Pablo Sandoval with a +3.7 WAR increase,
Rick Porcello with +1.9 increase,
Dustin Pedroia with +0.8 jump and
Rusney Castillo with +0.4 increase in WAR. If all of these projections come true, it's easy to see why
FanGraphs sees
The Carmine Hose coming in with a 92-win season in 2016.
