The Red Sox’ agreement with Walker Buehler came just days after the team’s two-year, $18.25 million deal with lefthanded starter Patrick Sandoval became official.

Sandoval, who is recovering from Tommy John surgery, won’t be ready until the second half of the season, if at all in 2025. But with Lucas Giolito and Buehler eligible for free agency after this season, the Sox opted to take a proactive approach to building depth for 2026, while hoping that changes to usage (likely fewer fastballs, and more emphasis on an elite changeup and quality breaking balls) could allow them to hit on some upside for a pitcher who had a 2.91 ERA in 27 starts in 2022.

“We largely felt like this was an opportunity in some ways to get ahead of where we’ve seen the pitching market go,” said Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow. “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 lefthanded starter.”

Breslow said the Sox’ signing of Sandoval wouldn’t impair the team’s ability to address more pressing needs for 2025.

“We’ve been very outspoken about making moves that impact our 2025 team,” said Breslow. “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.”

Other Red Sox notes:

▪ The willingness of Sandoval and Buehler to come to Boston on short-term deals while trying to prove they can be both healthy and dominant on the way to a next big contract is notable for a couple of reasons. First, it suggests the Red Sox are willing to pay handsomely for pitchers on relatively short-term deals. Secondly, it suggests that pitchers are open to the idea that they can thrive even while pitching for the Sox at Fenway Park — not always a given.

▪ While Breslow wouldn’t comment on the signing of Buehler before its official announcement on Saturday morning, he did acknowledge that the team’s roster-building focus has shifted primarily to the bullpen and adding righthanded bats.

“Those are probably the big rocks,” said Breslow. “There’s always the chance that there’s some opportunity that comes across, or that we’re able to uncover that isn’t one we’re anticipating, but we’ll likely shift focus to rounding out the bullpen and balancing out the lineup.”

▪ Red Sox manager Alex Cora, in a radio interview in Puerto Rico shortly after the agreement with Buehler became public, identified the Sox’ top priority as a righthanded-hitting second baseman — a not-thinly veiled reference to his ongoing interest in bringing Alex Bregman to Boston.

▪ Another Red Sox who might have interest in Bregman: Buehler. The two co-own a 3-year-old colt, March of Time, who won a race Friday at Santa Anita Park.

▪ The Red Sox showed some interest in free agent Gleyber Torres — who would have filled the righthanded-hitting second baseman profile — but never made an offer to the 28-year-old before he agreed Friday to a one-year, $15 million deal with the Tigers. The Sox were believed to have other priority targets ahead of Torres.

▪ Throughout 2024, Kyle Teel joined Marcelo Mayer and Roman Anthony in regular conversation about what it would be like to take part in a duck boat parade following a title in Boston. That made being dealt to the White Sox as the headline prospect in the Garrett Crochet deal particularly hard to fathom.

“I really never thought that I was going to be traded,” said Teel.

Still, Teel said he needed just a couple of hours on Dec. 11 to move past the shock of being dealt, and now embraces the idea that he can form bonds within his new organization as Chicago tries to create a championship culture from the ground up.

“My mind is at, ‘How can I help the White Sox be the best they can be and how can we eventually win a World Series there?’ ” said Teel. “It’s a great opportunity. I’m going in there trying to help the organization get better and help create a winning culture.”

As for his former teammates, particularly close friends Mayer, Anthony, and Kristian Campbell?

“I see really, really big things for them in the future,” said Teel. “It was an honor to play with those guys every single day.”

▪ Yhoiker Fajardo, the 18-year-old pitcher whom the Red Sox acquired from the White Sox for lefthander Cam Booser, was described by an evaluator as being in “a Clay Holmes-type mold,” a 6-foot-3-inch righthander with a diving sinker (currently in the low 90s, but with room to get to the upper 90s with added strength and some physical tweaks) as well as a tight slider that ducks below bats with swing-and-miss potential. His 8-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio ranked fourth in the Dominican Summer League last year.