The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Big market, small move
No good news for Red Sox fans in Betts trade
The best news for Red Sox fans is that their team’s ownership and management have done a magnificent job of helping the Los Angeles Dodgers stop the Yankees from capturing their 28th world championship.
Other than that, there is no good news in the Mookie Betts trade. Not for this season at Fenway Park. Not for 2020.
This is the year Back Bay becomes Tampa Bay.
This is the year North
Station becomes Rays North.
The Dropkick Murphys are drop-kicking the 2020 Red Sox season. Yeah, Tessie is a Messy.
First in payroll the last two years, among the top three in 13 of 18 years, and among the top four in all but one year since John Henry became owner, the Red Sox decided not to re-sign and to trade their best position player since Ted Williams. Chew on that splendid splinter long enough and it’ll turn into a two-by-four off the head.
On the 100th anniversary of the Red Sox selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees to help owner Harry Frazee finance “No, No Nanette,” they dealt Mookie and David Price in a three-way trade that will help the Dodgers finance their first World Series title since 1988.
Yes, Yes, Magic Johnson. Only weeks after Henry said, “This year we need to be under the CBT (Competitive Balance Tax),” the owner said it was a goal, not a mandate and obsessing on getting the payroll under $208 million was essentially a media concoction.
Then the Red Sox decided it wasn’t worth giving
Betts, in his prime at 27, the $420 million deal he wants, or even the $27 million he will receive in 2020 in the final year of his contract. They decided that Dodgers outfielder Alex Verdugo and Twins pitching prospect Brusdar Graterol, who can throw 100 mph, was better than waiting, risk losing Betts to free agency and getting only a middling draft pick in return.
Then the Red Sox also decided it was worth leav
ing their starting pitching staff painfully thin by trading Price and reportedly picking up half of the $96 million remaining on his contract.
Henry may want to quibble over the semantics of goal vs. mandate, but his actions speak much louder than his assertions. His actions scream, “Salary dump!”
And, oh yeah, the Red Sox still don’t have a manager after Alex Cora got fired for turning sign stealing into a high-tech video game.
So here’s my assertion: The Red Sox already have handed the keys to the Yankees in the AL East for 2020. In case something goes horribly wrong in the Bronx, they handed an extra set to the 96-win Rays. I’m not big on 2021 for the Sox, either.
Look, this is not new head of baseball operations Chaim Bloom’s fault. The sins of the past, those fat contracts to Nathan Eoavaldi and Chris Sale for example, were visited upon this son of Yale. Yet as a former part of the Rays’ intelligentsia, the new Red Sox GM also appears perfectly suited to ownership’s mandate, ah, goal to retool the organization into more financial restraint. (And pay no mind to the 1.7 overall rise in Sox ticket prices for 2020!)
Former president Dave Dombrowski did what he had to do to bully and spend his veteran way to the 2018 World Series title, and now Chiam will do what he does to rebuild the organization.
The Red Sox will likely spin some Machiavellian yarn in the coming days. They have shown a history of leaking unflattering things about managers and players after they leave Boston. That aside, there will at least be Sabermetric and advanced finance reasoning to demonstrate why making Betts the secondhighest player behind Mike Trout doesn’t make sense.
And you know what? Eventually, in a world of cold decimal points and colder cash, they could be proven right. Maybe $375 million or $400 million or whatever they could have agreed upon eats up too much of the payroll. Maybe the money saved can be better spent on Rafael Devers and free agents next year and the next and the next. After all, the Nationals allowed Bryce Harper to sign a 13-year, $330-millon contract with the Phillies last year. The Nationals still won the World Series.
Or maybe they’re wrong and they failed to keep speed with the evolving landscape. Certainly, there are some assumptions built into pragmatic optimism of the trade.
First off, this stands to be a public relations nightmare for the Red Sox. So much love has been showered on over-sized personality David Ortiz and in lager sense Tom Brady that brilliant yet understated figures such as Betts and the Bruins’ Patrice Bergeron don’t receive all the attention they deserve.
As he matured into his 30s, homegrown as an elite five-tool player, Betts figured to become an institution at Fenway. Mookie, his name alone, brings smiles of recognition from kids. He’s a guy without fanfare who brings food to the homeless. As Big Papi and eventually Brady become more like Bobby Orr and Larry Bird, a player like
Mookie would become current Boston royalty to be marketed as the face of the franchise.
True, the Yankees did let Robinson Cano walk in 2013, but I have a hard time imagining the Yankees letting Betts walk under the same conditions the Red Sox find themselves.
The Red Sox are a bigmarket, big-time franchise that in February 2020, pulled a Tampa Bay Rays. Maybe they are smarter than the media-driven masses. After all, the ownership led by Henry can break out their championship rings from 2004, 2007, 2013 and 2018 and say, “Relax. Trust us. We’ve proven what we can do. There never was a Curse of the Bambino and there sure as heck won’t be a Curse of the Mookie.”
Maybe they’ll be right. Maybe a three-year plan or five-year plan will bear the fruit of a fifth ring in the 21st century. Maybe Devers and Xander Bogaerts become the centerpiece and others large names will arrive. But right now? Something feels terribly wrong about allowing a generational Red Sox talent to slip into history. Like Henry is spitting in his own fans’ faces and bad karma or bad juju is gonna hit hard.
Right now, all Red Sox fans have in 2020 is hope. Hope that the Dodgers will be so good the Yankees will not have a championship parade through the Canyon of Heroes.