How does the Red Sox 2021 Outfield Stack up to THAT 2018 one?

It’s been said quite frequently recently that the Red Sox have now lost their championship-winning outfield from 2018 with Mookie Betts, Andrew Benintendi and Jackie Bradley Jr. all moving on to pastures new in the past two years.

That 2018 season was a fantastic one for the Red Sox, and the Three B’s were key contributors to the team’s performance both defensively and offensively – combining for 459 hits, 61 home runs, 308 runs and 226 RBIs between them.

Name	PA	H	HR	R	RBI	BB	SO
Mookie Betts	614	180	32	129	80	81	91
Andrew Benintendi	661	168	16	103	87	71	106
Jackie Bradley Jr.	535	111	13	76	59	46	137
Totals	1810	459	61	308	226	198	334

Embed from Getty Images

So the question is – how does the 2021 Red Sox outfield match up to this? Have we sacrificed significant on-field performance in the hunt for ‘financial flexibility’?

We obviously won’t know properly until the end of the season but we can do some comparisons based on the projected performances of the class of 2021 – and a few assumptions.

First among these assumptions is that the preferred outfield lineup for Alex Cora’s side will be Alex Verdugo, Franchy Cordero and Hunter Renfroe.

At first glance, the comparison between that outfield lineup and 2018’s is not at all favourable (note that all 2021 projected data used is taken from the ZiPs prediction system provided on Fangraphs).

Name	PA	H	HR	R	RBI	BB	SO
Alex Verdugo	534	141	14	69	51	43	87
Hunter Renfroe	462	97	26	56	81	34	130
Franchy Cordero	315	69	12	43	49	24	96
Totals	1311	307	52	168	181	101	313

It’s immediately clear that totals across the board for the new trio are lower than the Three B’s, suggesting what many of us instinctively thought – that the 2021 trio isn’t as good as the 2018 one. Importantly in this comparison, however, the plate appearance totals are significantly lower for the 2021 group, with ZiPs predicting nearly 500 fewer plate appearances for the 2021 outfield. This is almost a 25% reduction in opportunities at the plate (which in itself suggests that the Red Sox are likely to operate more rotation in the outfield than in 2018).

The statistics, therefore, need to be adjusted to account for this.

Using a rather coarse approach of simply reducing the 2018 values by 25% (which seems safer than extrapolating the 2021 projections out by another 500 PAs) you arrive at the following comparison:

Name	PA	H	HR	R	RBI	BB	SO
Reduced 2018 OF	1339	344	46	308	170	149	251
Projected 2021 OF	1311	307	52	168	181	101	313

Interestingly the 2021 outfield now leads in terms of home runs and RBI but are notably behind in hits and runs, with a lower amount of walks and a considerably higher number of strikeouts.

But is a comparison with the 2018 lineup fair? That team was one in which everything clicked and everyone played to their level, something that doesn’t happen often. So maybe the real question should be – how does the 2021 lineup compare to what we could have expected from the 2018 lineup had we kept that unit together?

Again using ZiPS projections for Mookie, Beni and JBJ we’d be expecting something around the following from them in the 2021 season:

Name	PA	H	HR	R	RBI	BB	SO
Jackie Bradley Jr.	525	108	19	67	54	49	138
Andrew Benintendi	583	127	13	72	57	67	124
Mookie Betts	654	163	32	117	98	75	100
Totals	1762	398	64	256	209	191	362

Here again, the Three B’s have significantly higher plate appearances than the 2021 line-up. Factoring the Three B’s numbers down such that we’re comparing a more similar number of plate appearances we get the following combined figures for Mookie, JBJ and Beni in 2021:

Name	PA	H	HR	R	RBI	BB	SO
Three B’s Adjusted 2021 Totals	1311	296	48	190	156	142	269
Projected 2021 OF	1311	307	52	168	181	101	313

In this instance, the 2021 Red Sox outfield doesn’t compare too badly at all with the Three B’s 2021 offensive output.

And I think that’s the takeaway from all of this – the heartstrings say it’s sad to lose that 2018 unit, and it is. But we need to remember that in that line-up we had one of the best players of the current generation truly coming into the heights of his powers and two other players playing well who have seen their performance tail off to a degree in the past two years (although 2020 was obviously a rather anomalous season).

Is this outfield going to be as productive as the 2018 outfield? No. Will it be as productive as the 2018 outfield would have been had they still been together at Fenway this year? Based on the numbers, quite possibly.

Let’s just hope the buggers can catch…

Rich Hampson is covering the Boston Red Sox during 2021 as part of the growing team of writers at Bat Flips and Nerds. Follow him on Twitter here.

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