On Monday, Manager Alex Cora, chief baseball officer Craig Breslow, and president/CEO Sam Kennedy sat at Fenway Park and acknowledged that another Red Sox season had come to a premature end.
“Our goal every year should be to contend for a division title, to poise ourselves for a deep playoff run, and with that as the standard here, we fell short,” Breslow said. “There’s no dancing around that. We need to be better.”
The Red Sox are missing their third consecutive postseason for just the second time in the last three decades. However, they took meaningful steps forward in their journey from rebuilding to rebuilt. The brass pointed to individual standout performances from young homegrown position players such as Jarren Duran and Ceddanne Rafaela, and starting pitchers Brayan Bello, Kutter Crawford, and Tanner Houck, who became the organization’s first trio of homegrown arms with at least 30 starts apiece since 1987.
Collectively, the Red Sox finished 81-81, avoiding a third consecutive losing season with a win in Sunday’s season finale. They placed third in the American League East after back-to-back years in the division cellar. The farm system is flourishing, and they haven’t paid a luxury tax penalty in two years.
The trio acknowledged the improvements, and Breslow laid out the offseason priorities: defense (particularly infield), “shoring up” the bullpen, and “figuring out how to balance” a “pretty imbalanced,” lefty-heavy lineup. He also noted that the Red Sox would like to improve their starting pitching depth.
Many of these action items are familiar needs that haven’t been fully met in recent years, in part because rebuilding and going all-in don’t exactly go hand-in-hand. So as the big-league team underwhelmed over most of the last half-decade, various front office figures have asked the public to be patient, trust the process, and believe that, even if they couldn’t see the forest through the trees, the vision was coming to fruition.
On Monday, Kennedy, Breslow, and Cora all declared the wait had gone on long enough.
“I can assure you that the feeling is that our fans have been through a lot,” Kennedy said. “They’ve been patient, and it’s time to get back where we belong.”
“I can remember, back at my introductory press conference, talking about achieving this standard of quality and consistency that would enable us to divide the World Series championships year over year, and we asked our fans to sacrifice a lot, to be patient as we built the foundation that would enable us to reach those goals,” Breslow said. “I think we’re here. I think we’re ready to deliver.”
Specifically, as AL East champions.
“The Wild Card? Yeah, it’s great, yeah it’s part of the tournament, but no. We’re shooting for the division,” said Cora, who’s stated several times over the last week that he feels this year was the “last struggle.”
“I think we’re going to be capable starting next year.”
“It’s time to get back and go for that division title,” Kennedy said. “There’s nothing like October baseball, and that’s our responsibility and our obligation to the best fans in baseball. We fell short of that this year, but we’re going to work tirelessly to get us back where we belong in the American League East. That’s our commitment, to do everything we can.”
It was not unlike what principal owner John Henry (who was not present on Monday) told reporters in January 2002, when Major League Baseball approved his purchase of the Red Sox.
”Win a World Series? That’s not my choice, it’s my role, it’s my obligation to New England,” Henry said. “That’s what I’ve been charged with. When you bid on the Red Sox, the challenge you’re undertaking is nothing short of winning the World Series.”
Plenty of fans didn’t believe the new owner at the time; they had no reason to. But two years later, those words were fulfilled with actions.
Kennedy acknowledged that there hasn’t been enough follow-through of late. Asked if he felt ownership did enough for the team or committed enough to them over the last year, he said, “No.”
The to-do list is a long one, though, and checking its boxes won’t come cheap. Other teams will be seeking upgrades as well, especially those that came as close or closer to a playoff spot. Breslow said the Red Sox “intend to be aggressive.” Asked if there was anyone the Red Sox wouldn’t consider giving up, he answered, “I think at this point, everything has to be on the table.”
However, since exceeding the first luxury tax threshold in a last-place 2022 season, the Red Sox have played it safe. While the Los Angeles Dodgers committed to the historic sum of $1.26 billion last offseason, Boston finished the offseason with just over $145 million guaranteed, and entered the season with a $205 million tax payroll, $8.1 million cheaper than the year before.
The Red Sox make a point of keeping payroll specifics private, Kennedy reiterated on Monday.
“It’s been a hallmark of this organization, 23 years, that we’ve been willing to invest into Major League payroll,” he said. “It’s also been a hallmark that we don’t talk publicly about what we plan to do with our payroll. Not because we’re trying to hide anything from the media or the fans, we just don’t like to talk publicly about our payroll plans because we see it as a competitive advantage in the American League East to not tip our hands to our competitors.”
Heading into the All-Star break, this season looked and felt like a turning point in this half-decade rebuild. That’s why this year’s second-half collapse is different from the previous two, and why the front office says their response will be different this offseason. Breslow discussed the internal growth – in the front office and on the farm – but acknowledged that “progress or success” should be “readily demonstrated by the product that we put on the field every day.”
“You start looking at (it) piece by piece, right, and there’s a lot of success stories,” Cora said. “Others, not so great, but we learned from (that), and we should be better in the offseason, attacking those things.”
“There was a feeling this year, particularly yesterday in the ballpark, it’s like, we don’t want this to end,” Kennedy said. “This has been, in a lot of ways, a season where sort of, what could have been? And so we need to do more. … We feel that burning urgency to get back to postseason play.”
Asked why the public should believe things will be different moving forward, especially after chairman Tom Werner’s promise of a “full throttle” offseason last November went unfulfilled, Kennedy acknowledged that the Red Sox have a lot to prove to their fans.
“Talk is cheap right now, words are hollow. That’s what we’re going to work on this offseason,” Kennedy said. “We fell short, and so we’ll have to let our actions be louder than our words.”
