![\"\"](\"https:\/\/mlbhi.aweu.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/red-sox-angels-reportedly-interested-in-teoscar-hernandez-hong-nhung.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe Red Sox and Angels are both showing interest in outfielder\u00a0Teoscar Hernandez, according to\u00a0Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. Hernandez\u2019s market has been fairly quiet since the offseason started last month, as slugger\u00a0Shohei Ohtani\u00a0dominated the positional market for much of the offseason to this point while the outfield market has seen most of its activity come from trades, with players like\u00a0Juan Soto,\u00a0Alex Verdugo, and\u00a0Jarred Kelenic\u00a0changing hands.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Hernandez, 31, is coming off a down season at the plate during which he slashed just .258\/.305\/.435 (105 wRC+) as a member of the Mariners. With that being said, the slugger still managed to crush 26 home runs last season and entered 2023 with a whopping .283\/.333\/.519 slash line since the start of the 2020 campaign. That slash line is good for a 133 wRC+, tied with\u00a0Austin Riley\u00a0for the 20th best figure in the majors across the 2020-22 seasons. With a stable, above-average offensive floor and a tantalizing, All Star-caliber ceiling, Hernandez ranked 12th on MLBTR\u2019s annual\u00a0Top 50 MLB free agents list, where we projected him for a four-year, $80MM contract.<\/p>\n
Either team is a fairly plausible fit for Hernandez. The Angels have a fairly healthy outfield mix that features superstar\u00a0Mike Trout\u00a0in center field with\u00a0Taylor Ward\u00a0and\u00a0Mickey Moniak\u00a0as the club\u2019s top corner options, backed up by the likes of\u00a0Jo Adell\u00a0and\u00a0Luis Rengifo. That being said, Rosenthal\u00a0also reports\u00a0that Rengifo, Ward, and Moniak are all garnering trade interest from other clubs. Moving even one of those players could provide an open for Hernandez to take a corner outfield spot on an everyday basis. Even if the club decides not to move on from any of the bats currently in its outfield mix, the addition of Hernandez and his reliable 25 to 30 home run power would go a long way to replacing the 44 dingers Ohtani smacked this past season.<\/p>\n
As for Boston, the club shipped Verdugo to the Bronx earlier in the offseason before replacing him with\u00a0Tyler O\u2019Neill\u00a0in a trade with the Cardinals. That leaves the club with O\u2019Neill,\u00a0Jarren Duran,\u00a0Wilyer Abreu, and\u00a0Rob Refsnyder\u00a0to mix-and-match with alongside\u00a0Masataka Yoshida, who figures to split time between left field and DH on a daily basis next season. While O\u2019Neill and Duran both have everyday potential and a youngster such as Abreu or\u00a0Ceddanne Rafaela\u00a0could emerge as a quality option, adding a reliable bat to the outfield could provide a major boost to a Red Sox offense that lost\u00a0Justin Turner\u00a0and\u00a0Adam Duvall\u00a0to free agency last month. Boston\u2019s hitting corps posted a middle-of-the-pack 99 wRC+ last season and Hernandez\u2019s power potential could be a catalyst for a club that generated just 63 home runs from its outfield mix in 2023, the seventh-worst figure in the majors.<\/p>\n
As Rosenthal notes, Boston appears to be focused on acquiring a front-of-the-rotation starter at the moment. The Angels, meanwhile, were\u00a0connected to\u00a0reigning NL Cy Young award winner\u00a0Blake Snell\u00a0recently and have\u00a0reportedly been aggressive\u00a0on the trade market in hopes of upgrading their pitching staff. Even as run prevention appears to be the priority of both clubs headed into 2024, that\u2019s unlikely to preclude either club from adding a bat of Hernandez\u2019s caliber.\u00a0RosterResource\u00a0projects the Angels for a 2024 payroll $62MM lower than their 2023 figure, while the Red Sox project for a payroll $67MM under their all-time high payroll (per\u00a0Cot\u2019s Baseball Contracts) of just over $236MM. That should leave both organizations with plenty of payroll room for both Hernandez (whose aforementioned contract projection from MLBTR carries an average annual value of $20MM) and a front-end starter such as Snell or\u00a0Jordan Montgomery, to say nothing of the availability of cheaper options like\u00a0Dylan Cease\u00a0and\u00a0Shane Bieber\u00a0on the trade market.<\/p>\n
Of course, Hernandez is hardly the only right-handed bat of note who either club could look to add this offseason. That being said, other options such as Turner,\u00a0Jorge Soler,\u00a0J.D. Martinez, and\u00a0Rhys Hoskins\u00a0all seem likely to require regular use of the DH slot. While that doesn\u2019t appear to be a problem for the Angels, who have\u00a0previously been connected\u00a0to Martinez this offseason, the Red Sox seem poised to rotate between bat-first players like Yoshida,\u00a0Rafael Devers, and\u00a0Triston Casas\u00a0at DH. The acquisition of any of these alternative bats would likely force Boston to play all three of those players in the field on a nearly everyday basis, complicating their defensive outlook significantly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Red Sox and Angels are both showing interest in outfielder\u00a0Teoscar Hernandez, according to\u00a0Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. Hernandez\u2019s market has been fairly quiet since the offseason… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":74167,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nflquynh.aweu.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nflquynh.aweu.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nflquynh.aweu.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nflquynh.aweu.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nflquynh.aweu.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nflquynh.aweu.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nflquynh.aweu.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nflquynh.aweu.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nflquynh.aweu.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nflquynh.aweu.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}