The Boston Red Sox 2025 playoff stint was brief, but in that brevity, there are some keys for 2026 that we can glean. As with all small samples, one needs to be careful reading too much into what happened on the field.
By the same token, when those playoff performances underscore regular-season concerns, they become the exclamation point at the end of the sentence. In the case of these three Red Sox who figure to have key roles in 2026, that exclamation point becomes more of a question mark.
3 Red Sox players whose 2025 playoff performance affected 2026 outlook
Brayan Bello
On the heels of Garrett Crochet's dominance in Game One of the AL Wild Card Series, the Red Sox needed Brayan Bello to step up so that the club could put its foot down on the throat of the hated New York Yankees.