Dodgers News: After Year-Long Struggles, Red Sox Cut Ties with Walker Buehler
Buehler's time in Bean Town has come to an end...
BOSTON, MA—With the 2025 Major League Baseball season approaching its final stretch and contending teams making the last modifications to their roster to give them the best opportunity moving forward, the Boston Red Sox have decided to release Walker Buehler.
The move was announced earlier today by the Red Sox organization with the corresponding move for the promotion of prospect Payton Tolle ahead of September’s roster expansion.
Buehler, 31, is now free to join any team and is still postseason eligible as long as the right-handed veteran signs a contract before the September 1st cutoff.
After winning the 2024 World Series with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Buehler entered the offseason as an unrestricted free agent and did not receive the one-year $21.05 million qualifying offer from the team.
The former Vanderbilt standout would then ink a one-year, $21.05 million deal with the Red Sox during the offseason, following his heroic performance last October, along with tremendous upside, joining a coaching staff that had revered pitching coach Andrew Bailey.
However, last year’s struggles continued to follow Buehler into the 2025 season, with the righty posting a 5.45 ERA across 112.1 innings and being removed from the Red Sox starting rotation earlier this week.
It has been a tough few seasons for Buhler, who has seemingly had his major league career derailed by injuries.
After finishing in the top four in National League Cy Young Award voting during the 2021 season, Buehler would undergo Tommy John surgery the following year, the second procedure of his career.
Buehler would not return until the 2024 season, when he posted mediocre numbers for Los Angeles and only made the team’s postseason roster out of pure necessity.
Despite Buehler finishing the 2024 regular season with a 1-6 record, 5.38 ERA, 5.54 FIP, 1.55 WHIP, .316 BABIP, and career worsts in Hard Hit percentage (41%), strikeout percentage (18.6%), and walk percentage (8.1%), he would end the 2024 postseason with thirteen consecutive scoreless innings.
That October, Buehler would turn back the clock, proving to be a pivotal part in the Dodgers’ eventual World Series run, winning games in the National League Championship Series versus the New York Mets, winning Game Three of the 2024 World Series, and ultimately closing out the clinching Game Five just days later.
Still, despite his shortcomings, Buehler will forever be etched in Dodgers history. He finished with forty-seven wins, twenty-two losses, an ERA of 3.27, and 754 strikeouts.
While theoretically Buehler could re-sign with Los Angeles, that idea remains unlikely with the team’s starting rotation full of arms with the return of Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow, Clayton Kershaw, and Shohei Ohtani.
Buehler’s return to Los Angeles would be a remarkable story, but it’s unlikely the Dodgers would give him innings during a postseason race unless there are major injuries.
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