POST-PAPI TICKET DEMAND SURPRISES EVEN SOX PREZ
Even Kennedy surprised to see the large post-Papi surge
David Ortiz is gone and ticket prices were raised. So, naturally, the Red Sox are selling seats faster than they did after winning the 2013 World Series.
No, it’s not the most intuitive outcome, even though the Red Sox won the American League East last year.
As of Thursday, Red Sox president Sam Kennedy said the team had sold about 1,675,000 tickets for 2017, up from 1,580,000 sold from the same date a year ago — a 6 percent increase.
“The other thing I checked is, there’s about 50,000 tickets more than we had sold on this date in 2014,” Kennedy said. “There seems to be even more ticket demand this offseason than following a World Series year. I was a little bit — obviously pleasantly surprised — but I was surprised.”
Season-ticket renewals are outpacing last year as well, with 81.1 percent buying in again for 2017 as of Thursday, compared to 76.6 percent signed up to return at the same time a year ago.
“I think the reason why the interest seems to be so high is because, building on the success of a 93-win team, we won the division . . . (we’re) sort of building on the momentum that we had last year,” Kennedy said. “And I do think that people, our fan base, feels like the Chris Sale acquisition was a huge step forward in terms of taking the next step.”
The young star power and a sense of sustainability may be at play, too.
The 2013 team did see the debut of Xander Bogaerts and Jackie Bradley Jr., but smaller acquisitions were leading the way — think
Jonny Gomes and Mike Napoli
— for a club with stars already in place. Mookie
Betts wasn’t the runnerup in the MVP voting in 2013 (as he was last year) and Bogaerts and Bradley weren’t coming off All-Star seasons.
A few more items from our discussion with Kennedy:
• The continuing Fenway projects:
About $9 million in work at Fenway is to be completed by Opening Day, Kennedy said. That includes the addition of seats between the dugouts, a right-field grandstand bar, a new video board on the right field side where the Cumberland Farms sign used to stand, four new suites in the State Street Pavilion, plus a bullpen wall that will be removable going forward, allowing Fenway to better adapt to non-baseball events.
The right-field grandstand bar reduces the number of seats in that area. Even with new seats coming between the dugouts, the number of net seats at Fenway drops slightly, by 218. Seating capacity is to be 37,731 in 2017, down from 37,949, according to Kennedy.
That doesn’t include standing room, which can see an additional 1,000 to 1,500 entries typically available. • The Ortiz tweet: Kennedy, like many of us, last week saw Ortiz send a blank tweet to that other newspaper, the Boston Globe. The mysterious (and presumably accidental) tweet caused a little stir: What was Big Papi trying
to say? Is he coming back?
“I was just as confused as everybody else,” Kennedy said. “But I plan on seeing him in the Dominican Republic later in January … so I will ask him and I’ll find out what he meant.”
Relax: Kennedy’s going to the Dominican as part of normal Red Sox business.
• The Godfather’s revelation:
Red Sox senior advisor of baseball operations Bill
James appeared Tuesday on MLB Network’s “MLB Now” program. During a panel discussion with Brian
Kenny, Ken Rosenthal and Ron Darling, we learned a little about what James, the Godfather of sabermetrics, is thinking these days.
James’ final take at the end of the show: “Hey, all of the new data we got in baseball is wonderful and . . . guys are doing terrific stuff with it. I don’t in any way want to say (anything) bad about it. But you know, there’s tremendously large questions about baseball that we still don’t understand at all. Like, how do we know if a guy is going to be a good teammate, or if he’s the right kind of teammate for what you don’t know. There’s huge stuff that we still don’t know. What’s the real impact of a manager?
“We’re kind of getting lost in the data. I’d like to get back to studying the big questions.” • Other James takes: On the Sale deal: “Well of course it killed us to give those guys up. You can’t play 25. You got to get the talent on the field. Obviously, absolutely I’m thrilled to get Chris Sale.”
On former Sox general manager Ben Cherington and the success of his farm system now that he’s out of the organization: “It happens in every field, doesn’t it? . . . The seeds you plant sometimes don’t grow into crops until after you’ve had the opportunity to benefit from it. That happened to Ben and that’s unfortunate, he’s a great guy.”
On what he’s learned about decision making, and the question of whether to spend in free agency or let young players have a chance: “That it’s a totally different decision one year than it is the next. And the research you did six months ago, two months ago may be totally irrelevant now because you’re in a different position and your needs are different and your values for the players are different. Those things change very rapidly.
“You could say I’m in the formula business, right? And we tend to develop formulas that measure things as if they were static. This is the guy’s value, this is his WAR. But in real life his value changes every day, every month. It’s not a static thing, it’s a dynamic thing.”
On the PED discussion around the Hall of Fame: “It’s unfortunate that those things became a part of the game, but they did become a big part of the game. The Hall of Fame almost hurts itself if it starts . . . pretending that things didn’t happen that really did happen.
“It’s not that these people were trying to lose. They were trying to win too hard. And you know, I would vote for ( Barry) Bonds, I would vote for ( Roger) Clemens. I’m not saying it’s a zero issue, but I would vote for those guys.” On failed PED tests and
Manny Ramirez: “I agree that there’s a difference there but I can’t speak ill of Manny Ramirez. I was in the light of the glory reflecting off Manny. And he was the guy doing the work and we were the guys getting the credit and I can’t speak ill.”
On PEDs and voting once more: “It’s an unsustainable line. Because we all know there are guys in there who were using PEDs already . . . and I sympathize with the guys who feel that they were cheated by it. And there are players who feel that they were cheated out of being an MVP. I sympathize with that, I understand it. But it’s just an unsustainable line. Some of these guys are going to get in using PEDs and others are not.”