BOSTON -- Manager Alex Cora and chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom said Thursday that the entire Red Sox coaching staff is expected back for 2023.
Cora said the team met with "the possible free agents (coaches Wednesday) and everybody's going to be back.''
It's not known which coaches were on expiring deals.
After last season, the Red Sox made a number of changes to their staff. First base coach Tom Goodwin was let go, and hitting coach Tim Hyers rejected a contract to return and instead joined the Texas Rangers coaching staff.
The Red Sox 2022 coaching staff consisted of first base coach Ramon Vazquez, third base coach Carlos Febles, pitching coach Dave Bush, bullpen coach Kevin Walker, bench coach Will Venable, game planning coordinator Jason Varitek, field coordinator Andy Fox, hitting coach Pete Fatse and assistant hitting coaches Ben Rosenthal and Luis Ortiz.
Venable has been mentioned as a possible candidate for managerial openings with both the Texas Rangers and the Kansas City Royals.
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Bloom addressed a future role for first baseman Eric Hosmer, acquired at the deadline to provide a veteran bat at first, but sidelined for much of the final two months with lower back issues.
In Hosmer's absence, Triston Casas got more playing time and showed he could be ready to be the first base starter next spring, demonstrating good power (five homers in limited action) and good control of the strike zone (.358 OBP).
Hosmer becomes especially redundant, given that he, like Casas, is a lefthanded hitter.
"Having two lefthanded hitting first baseman, with what we went through this year, the question about having too many options at first base is one we're happy to take,'' said Bloom.
That was a reference to the struggles of several players utilized at first this past season, including Bobby Dalbec and Franchy Cordero, who under-performed both offensively and defensively. In total, Red Sox first basemen combined to slash .223/.302/.381 this season.
Hosmer may ultimately be an attractive trade chip, since the Red Sox are responsible for just the major league minimum portion of his salary for the next three seasons. The Sox could move him over the winter to a team in need of an affordable, veteran option at first. Or they could keep him as insurance in case Casas regresses.
"Short answer is, I don't know yet,'' said Bloom. "Obviously, when we got (Hosmer), we were focused on what he could bring to us right now and not wanting to rush Triston. And then (Casas) came up and even though there were some ups and downs in terms of the results, the approach was very clear. And that's one of the biggest things you worry about, especially with someone like him, is that when they make that jump to the highest level, that the approach that carried them through the minor leagues will degrade.
"You guys saw it -- it didn't. Sometimes, the results were there and sometimes they weren't. But he was a tough at-bat every single time, which is going to be one of his calling cards going forward.''
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After the Red Sox dealt Christian Vazquez to Houston at the trade deadline, they were left with Reese McGuire and, eventually, Connor Wong to handle their catching duties. Both played pretty well, but were they good enough to go into next season as the team's catching duo?
Perhaps not.
"This,'' said Bloom, "is one of the areas I fully expect that we're going to explore additions. It's nice to know that we have two guys that are familiar with how we do things that showed a lot of good things. But we owe it to ourselves and everybody who cares about this team to look to get better and catcher is certainly not going to be an exception to that.''
The free-agent catching market includes Willson Contreras and, of course, Vazquez.
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CEO Sam Kennedy said the Red Sox will increase season ticket prices "between 1.5-2 percent'' for 2023. Single-game tickets, meanwhile, will continue to be sold with dynamic pricing, with in-demand games costing more..Kennedy, when asked if the Red Sox were considering selling any of their NESN inventory of games to a streaming service like Amazon Prime as the Yankees have done: "No.''
