My Girlfriend Ranks the Boston Red Sox

And it ain’t pretty.

Patrick J. Regal
The Boy Who Loved Joe Kelly
5 min readJun 28, 2022

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Billie Weiss/Boston Red Sox/Getty Images

I gave The Girl Who Loved Nick Pivetta an open-ended task: rank every player on the Boston Red Sox. No other directions. Rank them based on what? It was entirely up to her. I printed off 37 pictures from the 40 man roster, excluding a few players that we really see or have yet to make their debut (this was before Jeter Downs’ call-up last week)— and she may never have seen: Brayan Bello, Jay Groome, Darwinzon Hernandez, Bryan Mata, Ronaldo Hernandez, Jeter Downs, and for some reason I left off recent rotation call-up Josh Winckowski. Oops.

She decided to rank them solely on attractiveness, sorting them into categories: the hots, the nots, and the mids. Those sections are delineated here.

This is all in good fun. We love all of our boys. Well, most of them.

The nots:

A note from The Girl Who Loved Nick Pivetta: Bad facial hair automatically puts you in the nots category.

From this point on, her quotes are in regular type. My lines are in italics.

37. Alex Verdugo
Just unattractive in every way. He looks like his beard smells. Looks like he would catcall you. Plus he hasn’t done much for the team this season.

Michael Dwyer | AP

36. Rafael Devers
He needs a skin care routine and he needs to quit the dip. Baby face.

35. Hirokazu Sawamura
Looks old. Looks like my friend’s dad. But my friend’s dad is hot and he’s not.

34. Jake Diekman
Scraggly billygoat beard.

33. Christian Vázquez
See above. He beats Diek because I respect the work he puts in.

32. Christian Arroyo
Pube beard, for sure. Looks like a guy that I went to high school with that I always found unattractive. But his beard is better than Diekman’s or Vaz’s…he might see this and get upset. He seems sensitive.

31. Tanner Houck
I mean…just…I mean…

30. Josh Taylor
Horrific shave. The beard is fine, it’s nice, it’s thick, but he fumbled the bag on the shave.

29. Franchy Cordero
I’m giving him credit for the braces. Straight teeth king.

28. Rich Hill
Old.

27. Hansel Robles
Looks old.

26. James Paxton
Yeah, just looks old.

25. John Schreiber
Handsome, but his beard is way too long.

24. Tyler Danish
The facial hair makes him look like this guy I went to high school with.

23. Ryan Brasier
Reminds me of Tom Segura.

22. Kevin Plawecki
Needs to stop Plawecking his brows. But he looks like he gives good hugs.

21. Kutter Crawford
Handsome, had the potential to be higher up. But he looks like he’s from Virginia Beach and that’s a type I’ll never love. (I thought he would be much higher.) Yeah, he looks like a Bob’s Burgers character.

NESN

The mids:

20. Phillips Valdez
Scrawny is not at all my vibe. I’m a lot of woman and he’s not a lot of man.

19. Michael Wacha
Just has a really long face. His nose is really long.

Steve Helber | AP and Barry Chin | Boston Globe

18. Trevor Story
Something about him is so handsome and so not at the same time. We trend upwards after him.

17. Chris Sale
Looks exactly like Trevor Story but just a little hotter. Look at these two men and tell me they aren’t the same man just different fonts. He’s (Story) Comic Sans and he’s (Sale) Arial.

16. Matt Barnes
He has a really beautiful smile.

15. Connor Seabold
Let’s call it what it is: the Top Gun: Maverick effect.

14. Jarren Duran
He’s attractive, but he looks like he could be in the new Avatar movie if they were white and not blue.

13. Matt Strahm
Love the moss. A little too pothead for my liking.

Barry Chin | Boston Globe

The hots:

12. Rob Refnsyder
He’s a real cutie.

11. Connor Wong
Just a happy fella. Is he a short king? (Yeah.) I can tell.

10. Nathan Eovaldi
Absolutely looks like someone I would bring home to my mom. But he’s got some honkers for ears. I think he can echolocate.

9. Kiké Hernandez
(I though Kiké would be easy top five. This is surprising to me.) Let me tell you why he made it out unscathed: He’s the only one with bad facial hair to make it out alive. He’s just that handsome: top five without the facial hair.

8. Garrett Whitlock
He’s a six, but he opens the car door for you on a date? Nine!

7. J.D. Martinez
He’s so handsome. But he’s just a little old. Not too old, but older than I should be with.

6. Xander Bogaerts
We’re in super handsome territory. Excellent smile.

5. James Norwood (DFA’d immediately after this ranking)
He’s next to Bobby D because he’s very Bobby D-ish.

4. Bobby Dalbec
He’s the OG. Throbby Dalbec. He’s a heartbreaker, which is why some people are a little higher. But he’s always top 5.

3. Austin Davis
Just wildly handsome. The little bit of moss. My type.

2. Jackie Bradley Jr.
Let’s be real, he’s number one. He’s gorgeous. The smile, the teeth, the lips. Everything about this man is perfect. But we know the man who has found his way into my heart…

1.Nick Pivetta
We should have seen this coming. She is The Girl Who Loved Nick Pivetta after all.

There’s just something about him. The big nose. The smile. The height — and I’m not even a height girl. The Canadian.

(What do you think of the facial hair?)

If you had given me a pic with the facial hair, he’d be 14th. He’s taking a little trip down to MattStrahmville.

Sarah Stier | Getty Images

Want to chat Red Sox? Check out Bleacher Brawls.

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Patrick J. Regal
The Boy Who Loved Joe Kelly

Educator. Artist. Founder and Editor of Feature Presentation. Instagram: patrickjregal