ORLANDO, Fla. -- Over the last couple of weeks, Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow was able to add two pitchers to his starting rotation in the proven Sonny Gray and a lesser-known commodity with upside in Johan Oviedo.
These acquisitions have enabled Breslow to narrow his focus at the Winter Meetings and move the power bat he covets to the top of the preferred order.
"We still are going to prioritize someone who can hit in the middle of the order and kind of change the overall outlook of the offense,” said Breslow.
One of those bats, right-handed-hitting masher Pete Alonso, will reportedly drive 90 minutes from his home in the Tampa area on Tuesday to meet with prospective teams, including the Red Sox.
Never one to tip his hand, Breslow declined the opportunity to confirm the report. But he didn’t deny it, either.
"Our hope is that we're having a lot of meetings here over the next few days, but yeah, I'm not going to get into specifics about exactly with whom,” Breslow said.
The thought of Alonso taking aim at Fenway Park’s Green Monster is enough to make Boston’s rabid fan base warm up in the middle of winter.
But as with any free agent, the Red Sox are far from alone in terms of being able to control Alonso’s ultimate destination.
Agent Scott Boras will size up the market and try to get Alonso the multiyear deal he didn’t get a year ago when he was attached to a qualifying offer and returned to the Mets for another season.
The market for power bats hasn’t really moved yet this offseason. When it does, Breslow will be in position to pounce.
If Alonso seems like the perfect fit to enhance Boston’s current roster, there are others who are also drawing interest from Breslow and his staff, including left-handed-hitting slugger Kyle Schwarber, infielder Bo Bichette and -- of course -- Alex Bregman, who spent last season with the Sox but opted out after the campaign.
Bichette and Bregman are hitters who are typically in the 20- to 30-homer range, while Schwarber swatted a career-high 56 long balls in 2025. Alonso, meanwhile, roped 38 to go with 126 RBIs.
"Home runs are a foolproof way to put runs on the board," said Breslow. "Typically, that type of profile comes with a tradeoff, most often contact ability, which is another area that we feel like we need to improve the identity of the offense. But at the end of the day, we’re trying to score as many runs as possible. There are a few different paths to doing that.
"I think that the true middle-of-the-order bat that can hit the ball out of the park, has probably an outsized impact on the rest of the lineup because of the way you have to attack someone -- the on-base implications it can have. And so, again, we’re going to consider all ways of improving the team, but finding someone in the middle of the order and who hits the ball out of the park is a really good place to start.”
What about signing the quintessential big bopper (Alonso or Schwarber) while adding more of a pure hitter as well?
"I don’t want to put limitations on what we may be able to do,” Breslow said. “We’re going to continue to try to find ways to improve the team.”
The landscape has changed for the Red Sox even compared to the start of last year’s Winter Meetings, when they were still a couple of days away from their blockbuster trade for Garrett Crochet.
Backed in large part by Crochet, the Sox snapped a three-year postseason drought and went toe-to-toe with the rival Yankees in an AL Wild Card Series, bowing out in a decisive Game 3.
Now, the goal is to make the type of deep run the Sox were known for while winning the World Series four times between ‘04 and ‘18.
That, of course, can be expensive, but it sounds like the Red Sox are ready to spend in the deeper end of the pool again when it comes to free agents.
“When there's been the opportunity to improve the team, especially a team that's been competitive and one that has hopes of competing deep into the playoffs, ownership has supported investing in it,” said Breslow. “This year is no different. So we've cast a pretty wide net with respect to how we can improve the team, and at least as we sit here today, there are a number of opportunities.”