However, they also added another starter this offseason, Patrick Sandoval, who may not throw a single pitch for the club this year.

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Sandoval, 28, signed a two-year, $18.25 million deal with Boston this offseason while he’s recovering from UCL surgery that he underwent midway through last season.

After the Red Sox announced the move, chief baseball officer Craig Breslow spoke with the Boston Globe’s Alex Speier and explained his thinking on the signing.

“We largely felt like this was an opportunity in some ways to get ahead of where we’ve seen the pitching market go,” Breslow said. “We identified Sandoval as someone we felt like we could provide with some development opportunities, could tweak the pitch usage a little bit, and could get him back to where he was a couple years ago as a dominant left-handed starter.

“We’ve been very outspoken about making moves that impact our 2025 team. But when we have the opportunity to also improve the future outlook in a way that we felt like didn’t detract from our ability to improve 2025, it made sense to do so.”

Sandoval has posted a 4.01 ERA, 1.392 WHIP and 8.9 K/9 in 107 appearances (100 starts) over his career. His best season came in 2022 when he recorded a 2.91 ERA, 1.339 WHIP and 9.1 K/9 in 148 2/3 innings over 27 starts.

The Red Sox are hoping that a healthy Sandoval in their pitching program will reach those peaks again in either the later part of 2025 or 2026.