Major League Baseball’s annual Winter Meetings wind up on Wednesday, and the Boston Red Sox will be leaving Orlando, Florida, without accomplishing what chief baseball officer Craig Breslow said was their top priority — a power bat for the middle of the Boston batting order.
On Tuesday, designated hitter Kyle Schwarber — who led the National League with 56 home runs — agreed to a five-year, $150 million contract with the same team he came from, the Philadelphia Phillies.
One More Righty Power Bat to Target
Then on Wednesday, another top Red Sox target signed with Boston’s American League East divisional rival, the Baltimore Orioles.
Arguably, New York Mets all-time franchise home run king Pete Alonso would have made an even more fitting acquisition than Schwarber, because Alonso swings from the right side, and the Red Sox lineup is nearly devoid of righty power to swing for the storied Green Monster just 310 feet, at its shortest point, from home plate.
But according to a report by Boston Globe Red Sox insider Alex Speier, the game may not be over just yet for the Red Sox. They still have another free agent righty power hitter on their radar, and this one will come at a lower price tag.
Sox Have Held Talks With 49-Homer All-Star
Alonso’s reported deal with the Orioles puts him slightly ahead of Schwarber, at $155 million for five years. But with the $31 million per year the Red Sox owe third baseman/DH Rafael Devers now the San Francisco Giants‘ problem, Boston should have been able to easily afford the price for Alonso.
So what now for the Red Sox? With third baseman Alex Bregman still a free agent, their only current right-handed power threat remaining is 33-year-old shortstop Trevor Story who hit 25 homers this year — his highest total since 2018 when he played in hitter-friendly Coors Field for the Colorado Rockies.
According to Speier’s report published Tuesday, the Red Sox “have had conversations with and about” Seattle Mariners’ third baseman Eugenio Suárez who is also a free agent after playing out his seven-year, $66 million deal with the Cincinnati Reds.
The Reds dealt Suárez to Seattle at the trade deadline. Between the two clubs, the right-handed, 12-year veteran slammed 49 home runs in 2025. That was the fifth-most in MLB, and more importantly for the Red Sox, more than any other purely right-handed hitter except for the New York Yankees‘ Aaron Judge with 53.
(Mariners’ catcher Cal Raleigh led the majors with 60 home runs, but is a switch hitter, with 22 of those homers from the right side.)
Suárez Built For Fenway Park
Signed out of Venezuela by the Detroit Tigers for a negligible $10,000 bonus way back in 2008, Suárez will turn 35 years old during the 2026 season. Perhaps for that reason, Spotrac estimates that he can be signed for just $30 million over two years.
While the price tag is clearly important to the Red Sox, equally important is the hitter profile revealed by Suárez’s spray charts. According to the chart compiled by FanGraphs, only seven of the right-hander’s home runs went to the opposite field. The rest were all to left or left-center, making Suárez an ideal power threat for Fenway Park.
Jonathan Vankin JONATHAN VANKIN is an award-winning journalist and writer who now covers baseball and other sports for Heavy.com. He twice won New England Press Association awards for sports feature writing. He was a sports editor and writer at The Daily Yomiuri in Tokyo, Japan, covering Japan Pro Baseball, boxing, sumo and other sports. More about Jonathan Vankin
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