The Red Sox want to upgrade their pitching, while also filling holes in the lineup created during the season by the trades of Kevin Youkilis, Adrian Gonzalez and even Carl Crawford.

For that reason, Ben Cherington isn't putting one need ahead of another.

"I don't know if we can follow an order, because there's enough to do and some sort of impact the other," he said. "I think we have to keep engaged in a number of different things at once with agents and teams. We have a general idea of things we want to pursue the most aggressively. We'll see if any of those land more quickly, and if they do, that might shape us in a certain way. I think we need to keep our options open as much as we can, knowing we have a lot of work to do."