How long until the Red Sox are good again? We asked evaluators around baseball.

“We owe it to our players and our fans to take the optimistic view that says our guys are going to take a step forward, and that some external additions, some accelerated internal timelines [of player development] push us into contention in earnest,” said chief baseball officer Craig Breslow.

Still, such a perspective would require the team to defy the odds. Making the playoffs isn’t impossible, but most forecasts suggest it’s unlikely. They are in the hole, but not at the bottom of it, as they attempt to climb out — without a ladder.

“What’s the path forward? I don’t know that I see it,” said one AL evaluator. “It’s exactly where you don’t want to be.”

So how do they surface in a place where, for instance, their playoff odds go from those of a long shot to one where a 50th percentile performance gets them into the postseason? And how long will that take?

Clearly, development is at the forefront of the 2024 mission. Even before Breslow was hired in November, the Sox had started overhauling some of the ways they try to help players improve. Breslow accelerated and amplified those efforts, particularly on the pitching side.

With Rafael Devers signed for the long haul, Triston Casas and Brayan Bello established in the big leagues, Ceddanne Rafaela, Wilyer Abreu, and Jarren Duran offering promise, and the heralded trio of Marcelo Mayer, Roman Anthony, and Kyle Teel on the Double A horizon, the team sees grounds for optimism.

But that hope comes without a timeline.

“My hope would be this is where we’re seeing contributions from a young core in the big leagues,” said Breslow. “We can also look behind us and see another group, another wave coming, and those two should at some point converge, and then we can say this should be a really good team for a really long time.

“Exactly where we are on that cycle I think is really difficult to determine because it’s largely going to be dictated by the development and progress with the players on the field. We won’t know that until it happens.”

Rather than bringing in a wealth of established players, the Sox are giving opportunities to less-established players — not just Rafaela and Abreu, but rotation members Tanner Houck and Garrett Whitlock — in hopes of letting them reach their ceilings. Such an approach could pay off in the long haul but likely will come with discomfort in the short term.

“It just feels like a very strange year,” said a National League evaluator. “I think they do have talent, but they’re making a ton of bets on — or maybe they’re not even betting on it — they’re just hoping that a lot of these guys reach their ceiling and reach it very quickly, which is usually not a very effective recipe. And I think they know that.”

“I understand that they want to build it from the ground up,” said another. “It looks like they’re trying to stay as competitive as possible while not completely rebuilding. But it will look ugly if it doesn’t work correctly.”

Or, put another way, when might making the playoffs represent an expectation rather than a surprise?

There’s less consensus around this. One evaluator felt the Sox could have positioned themselves reasonably well in 2024 had they only added Blake Snell or Jordan Montgomery, and believes contention is thus very much within reach next year.

“They’re really not that far away if they were to just spend a little bit of money,” he said. “There’s enough talent to where if some of these things click and then they actually add next offseason, then I could see them being a legitimate wild-card contender. That’s what’s so strange and frustrating [about this offseason].”

Another evaluator suggested that when Mayer, Anthony, and Teel become established big leaguers, the Red Sox will enter a new phase where they can aim to field one of the best talent bases in baseball. However, the journey for that trio to reach the point where Casas and Bello are now requires time.

Even if all three reach the big leagues by the end of 2024 — a possibility to which the Sox are open — a long history of prospects (Dustin Pedroia in 2006-07; Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts, and Jackie Bradley Jr. in 2014; Casas in 2022-23) suggests that arriving in the big leagues is not the same as being established in the big leagues.

“Those are real, legitimate prospects,” said an evaluator. “But if they just try to develop those guys and not supplement it, then I’m talking two, three, maybe even four years away from being legitimate contenders. But if they just added a few pieces to supplement it like most teams in their position would, it could be a next-year thing.”

In particular, there’s skepticism about the team’s internal pitching options. Bello is obviously their long-term anchor. This spring, multiple evaluators described him as a No. 3 starter on a championship contender. Until the Sox acquire pitchers who exceed that projection, skepticism will remain.

“I think their pitching is years away,” said one of the NL evaluators. “I don’t see pitching coming. I don’t see it the same way they do. I know they like guys a lot more than I do. I don’t see it that way. I don’t know how they get to be a playoff team without more pitching, period.”

Several industry members believe the Sox require a front-of-the-rotation addition from outside the organization to escape the purgatorial middle.

“If they don’t push the chips in, they’re not going to do it,” said one evaluator, noting the outrageous young talent on the Orioles as well as the strength of the Rays’ and Yankees’ farm systems. “That division is just far too good.”

Yet even if, say, the Sox add former Cy Young winner Corbin Burnes as a free agent next offseason, some believe a reasonable expectation would be improvement in 2025 before sustained contention becomes a real possibility in 2026.

Obviously, the timetable for sustained contention is subject to interpretation and disagreement. What isn’t subject to interpretation is that player development will determine the Sox’ approach to team-building. They will make trades or sign big-name free agents only after their young players arrive at a point of critical mass.

“How quickly and how and to what magnitude guys take steps forward, that to me is what determines when are we at this point where we say we are committed to potentially sacrificing future wins for now wins,” said Breslow.

Clearly, the Sox don’t feel they have arrived at that point — hence trading Chris Sale for second baseman Vaughn Grissom.

Does that mean there’s no hope? No. After all, the Orioles, prior to their 101-win season, and Diamondbacks, before their run to the World Series, had longer odds of making the playoffs than the Sox do this year.

“The thing that’s easy to gloss over as we talk about projections and models and what we’re supposed to be on paper and all of those things is the fact that we’re going to play the games here in a week,” said Breslow. “That’s going to dictate who we are and what we do. That’s the thing that I look most forward to.”

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Alex Speier can be reached at alex.speier@globe.com. Follow him @alexspeier.