The biggest call of the Red Sox winter is about a player who has never taken a big-league at-bat. Franklin Arias, the organization's top prospect, is pushing for a job, and the man holding it, Trevor Story, has one guaranteed season left on his contract. Our take: keep Arias, have him at shortstop by summer at the latest, and slide Story over to second.
Why it can't wait
Sean McAdam laid out the choices on Oct. 16 in his State of the Sox column for MassLive: make Arias the shortstop, break him in at second base, or trade him to fill a hole somewhere else. Most of Craig Breslow's other moves this winter hang on that answer. Trade Arias for a bat and the lineup changes shape while a farm Breslow has already picked over gets thinner. Keep him and you've settled who plays second, who DHs, and maybe which outfielder gets moved.
The kid can hit. Arias batted .331/.388/.506 in 42 games at Triple-A Worcester after a July 24 promotion from Double-A Portland, and he finished the year with 25 homers in 117 games. He did all of it at 20.
Breslow has already shown he'll spend prospects. At the Aug. 3 deadline he sent three of Boston's top five prospects, by MLB Pipeline's ranking, to Baltimore in the deal for Adley Rutschman, the AP reported. The season still ended with two losses at Yankee Stadium in the Wild Card Series, 9-0 and 9-2 (more on that finish here). By McAdam's count, the trades for Garrett Crochet, Sonny Gray, Willson Contreras, Curtis Mead, Caleb Durbin and Rutschman cost 19 prospects. Arias is the best chip he has left.
What Story's contract allows
Story hit .235/.271/.351 with five homers in 64 games in 2026. A year earlier he had his best season in Boston: 157 games, .263/.308/.433, 25 homers, 96 RBIs and 31 steals. Coming off that year, he passed on his opt-out in November 2025. The trouble is that 2025 looks like the outlier. He played 43 games in 2023 and 26 in 2024, so it's the only one of his last four seasons in which he stayed on the field.
According to the AP, he's owed $25 million in 2027, and the club holds a $25 million option for 2028 with a $5 million buyout. McAdam adds two complications. Story now has 10-and-5 rights, so he can veto any trade, and after what McAdam calls another injury-marred season his trade value has dropped a long way. McAdam also describes him as popular and respected in the clubhouse, which counts for something when you're asking a veteran to hand his position to a rookie.
Story will be 34 when the 2027 season opens. The Red Sox owe him at least $30 million whatever they decide. All they get to choose is where he earns it.
The case against a trade
McAdam's argument for dealing Arias holds up on its own terms. The free-agent market for position players is thin: the best bats he names, Seiya Suzuki and Randy Arozarena, are both 32 and look more like complementary pieces than players to build around. Boston already has more than $250 million committed for 2027, he writes, and if the next labor deal brings a salary cap or stiffer payroll penalties, trading for established players could end up cheaper than signing them. And any deal for a hitter like Elly De La Cruz, he notes, would likely have to include Arias.
We'd still say no. Teams trade top prospects when they doubt the player or have a surplus at his position, and the Red Sox don't have either problem at shortstop. An evaluator from another organization who saw Arias often in 2026 told McAdam, "I am 100 percent convinced that he's ready to be their everyday shortstop." And a team with more than $250 million already committed, staring at a possible cap or stiffer tax, needs good players who will be cheap for years. Arias is one of the few it has.
McAdam raises the obvious worry: will Arias handle the jump to the majors better than Marcelo Mayer, Kristian Campbell and, so far, Roman Anthony? Mayer is a Giant now, traded on Aug. 3. Campbell hit .223/.319/.345 in 67 games as a rookie in 2025, which is a rough landing, so the worry is fair. We'd plan for Arias to scuffle for a few weeks and live with it.
Where everyone plays
McAdam's gentler path has Arias debut at second base, where he played 17 games in 2026 between Portland and Worcester, while Story stays at short. Mead becomes the everyday DH, and Jarren Duran gets traded out of a crowded outfield.
Mead has earned the DH look. He hit .253/.353/.498 with 17 homers in 88 games across two teams in 2026. Isiah Kiner-Falefa, listed at second, hit .242/.322/.311 in 66 games, which is a utility man's line.
Starting Arias at second in April is fine if it keeps the peace with Story. The end state should be the other way around: Arias at short, Story at second. Arias played 79 games at shortstop in 2026, and that evaluator wasn't talking about second base. Asking a 34-year-old coming off another shortened season to cover less ground is a reasonable request. If Story stays healthy and hits like he did in 2025, the Red Sox get a strong second baseman for a year, and the 2028 option decision gets easier either way.
The option we'd rule out is the quiet one: parking Arias at Polar Park to protect the depth chart. He has already handled Triple-A pitching, and another April in Worcester won't teach him much.
He isn't on the 40-man roster, and the Boston Globe reported on Sept. 23 that he doesn't have to be added until after the 2027 season, so the roster move can wait even if the plan can't. The Globe also reports that a lockout is close to certain when the collective bargaining agreement expires on Dec. 1, and that clubs can't have any contact with 40-man players while it lasts. Put Arias on the 40-man early and the club can't talk to him until the lockout ends. Leave him off and they can keep working with him, which is fine, as long as somebody has already decided where he's playing when he gets the call.
The clock
Breslow has said it's hard to upgrade this roster because the Sox already have established players at every position, McAdam reports. Arias is the cleanest way around that problem, because he adds a starter without a trade or a free-agent contract. Trading him would fill one hole and open another at the one position where the starter will be 34 and playing out the last guaranteed year of his deal.
Dec. 1 puts a date on this winter. Story is on the 40-man, so if the owners lock the players out, the Red Sox can't talk to him until it's over. Moving a popular veteran to second, one they can't trade without his say-so, is a talk to have in person and soon. After that comes the call the whole winter hangs on: whether Arias spends 2027 in their infield or in somebody else's.