‘You walk alone’ seems to be the message
Picked-up pieces while finally understanding the message Fenway Sports Group has delivered to loyal Red Sox fans around the world ...
From this point forward, you walk alone.
■ Sadly, that’s it right there, folks. After a couple of decades of all-in, four-championship, money-is-no-object ownership, Red Sox boss John Henry evidently has decided that the Sox are no longer a top priority, but merely a part of “a global sports, marketing, media, entertainment and real estate portfolio.” FSG is out of the winning business with its baseball team in 2024, and Sox fans have every right to feel abandoned.
Red Sox Nation was once like FSG’s prized Premier League soccer team, whose fans locked arms, raised a pint, and sang, “You’ll never walk alone.”
No more. If you still care about the Red Sox, you very much walk alone.
It should be clear to all by now: The Red Sox brass is not going to spend money or make much effort to improve this team. The message to Alex Cora, his staff, and fans, is unambiguous: This is your team. Figure it out. We don’t care if you finish last for the fourth time in five years and the seventh time in 13 years, we are not going to spend another penny to make it better. We are done.
Suddenly Red Sox fans are like characters from “Eleanor Rigby.” They are all the lonely people. And I am writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear.
After Tom Werner’s pledge in early November for a “full throttle” offseason, the Sox have arrived in Seattle to open their season this week with a certain-to-break-down starting rotation of Brayan Bello, Nick Pivetta, Kutter Crawford, Garrett Whitlock, and Tanner Houck. Aggregate career won-lost record:
105-123.
These are the Boston Red Sox, people.
In 2004 — when the Red Sox were committed to bringing you championships — their starting staff was Pedro Martinez, Curt Schilling, Derek Lowe, Tim Wakefield, and Bronson Arroyo.
Boston baseball’s winter of neglect was downright demoralizing.
After announcing that some ticket prices would indeed rise again, Henry (who also owns the Globe) skipped the annual Winter Weekend fan festival in Springfield, then went to Saudi Arabia in January to discuss FSG’s $3 billion golf investment with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, who manages Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which finances the LIV golf tour. Henry hasn’t participated in a Red Sox press conference since trading Mookie Betts in 2020 (which the Sox said was “a baseball move”).
Boston’s still-life winter was packed with cost-cutting and a quest for payroll flexibility over established talent. How else does a team ignore Adam Duvall (21 homers, .834 OPS in 92 games for the Sox in 2023) and sign C.J. Cron to a $2 million minor league deal? Duvall signed with the Braves for $3 million. The Sox released Cron and will go with contract-friendly Bobby Dalbec (.204, one homer in 2023).
The best example of ownership’s neglect unfolded when new Sox starter Lucas Giolito was lost for the season after elbow surgery and the front office did not even pretend to try to get Cora another quality arm. Agents and GMs were astounded when the Sox made zero effort to get “in on” Blake Snell or Jordan Montgomery. The price was too high even for the immortal Michael Lorenzen — who went to the Rangers for $4.5 million.
The Sox settled for 36-year-old journeyman Chase Anderson (seven teams in 10 seasons; 1-6, 5.42 ERA last year), who makes $1.25 million.
Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow explained the move to the Globe’s Alex Speier, saying, “We have to make the moves that make sense for us working within all of the constraints. It’s really easy to talk about about the financial ones, but there are more.”
“Constraints”?
Maybe fans should go Full Bres-LowBall when they’re at the Fenway ticket window deciding whether to pay some of the highest prices in baseball for the product the Sox are putting on the field.
Try telling the person behind the window that you’re working within the “constraints” of your monthly budget. You may have to choose between making your car payment or watching some Triple A players learning on the job in the big leagues.
Cora certainly appears to be in on the joke. We have never seen a manager more comfortable going into the last year of his contract. When the 2024 season is over, Cora is going to cash in with a team willing to spend money.
Here’s the New York Times’s preseason assessment of your team: “The Red Sox once again appear to be a last-place club that didn’t make much effort to get better in the short term.”
Strap yourselves in for the big 162. The Sox are young and hungry and maybe they’ll be fun to watch. The pitching philosophy is betterstructured than it was the past two years and the spring training vibe was positive. But they are a largely starless lot who’ve made more errors than any other team in baseball over the last four seasons and have very little pitching at the minor league levels.
It’s pretty obvious that ownership is counting on tourists and pink hats filling the old ballpark for what Werner sells as “the Fenway experience.”
Mercy.
Bad times never seemed so bad.
You’re on your own, Red Sox fans. From this point forward, you walk alone.
■ Quiz 1: Name the Red Sox Opening Day infield in 2004. Quiz 2: Five lefthanders have pitched the opener for the Red Sox since 1986. Name them (answers below).
■ Bob Kraft. Wow. He tells writers he was unaware that players ranked his team/facility near the bottom of the NFL in terms of family accommodations and player experience even though the Patriots ranked near the bottom in the exact same poll last year.
And then . . . Kraft has the gall to say he was disappointed with the negativity of “The Dynasty,” an Apple TV+ series that he basically sculpted from start to finish. Kraft quarreling with negativity in “The Dynasty” is like Martin Scorsese complaining that his 3½-hour “Killers of the Flower Moon” is too long.
■ When Theo Epstein came back to the Red Sox (part of the FSG empire) and was said to be involved with Liverpool, one of my friends became convinced that Theo was going to hire Cora to coach Liverpool, Ted Lasso-style.
■ Speaking of Liverpool, it’ll be John Henry vs. Steve Pagliuca when Liverpool plays Atalanta in the Europa League quarterfinals in April.
■ I don’t know about you, but it makes me nervous to hear Jerod Mayo’s nonstop homages to “ownership” and “the Krafts.” He sounds like a man totally beholden to Bob and Jonathan, anxious to give the bosses the credit and respect they covet.
■ Old friend J.D. Martinez informed the Mets that he won’t be ready for Opening Day and will need to start the season in the minors. The new Mets boss, 39-year-old David Stearns (Harvard ’07), was the young Astros assistant GM who released Martinez in 2014.
■ It’s not just us: Six of six New York Post baseball writers picked the Red Sox to finish last. In a related note, 2023 was the first time the Red Sox and Cardinals finished in last place in the same season.
■ Caitlin Clark scored 27 points with 10 assists and eight rebounds in a first-round win vs. Holy Cross last weekend, but the superstar looked petulant and tight throughout the afternoon. She missed nine of her first 11 shots and committed five first-quarter turnovers against the Crusaders. HC lost, 91-65, but easily beat the 38½-point spread. Iowa did not look like a team en route to a national championship.
■ Hero Ball Dept.: NBC Sports Boston’s Chris Forsberg reports that Jaylen Brown bounced the basketball 23 times before rushing up a bad shot late in Monday’s 2-point loss to the Hawks — a game the Celtics had led by 30. This pairs well with Jayson Tatum’s 19-dribble isolation effort before missing a last-second fallaway in a 1point loss to the Cavaliers earlier this month.
As good as they are, the Celtics need work with their late-game execution when the score is close. That stuff matters in the playoffs.
■ Can’t believe Larry Bird did the commercial with the wildly annoying Allstate “Mayhem” guy.
■ Red Sox Nation and New England sports lost a giant when Arthur D’Angelo died at age 97 in late February. One of the kindest men who ever lived, Arthur came here with his twin brother, Henry, in 1938 and built the Twins Enterprises souvenir empire on Jersey Street, which became the global 47 brand.
Arthur befriended Ted Williams when The Kid became a legend at Fenway and regularly drove Tom Yawkey home to his Boston hotel suite after long, thirsty days at the ballyard.
Arthur raised four wonderful sons, hired a million local kids to work at his store (young employees in the old days were paid in cash in brown paper envelopes), and was inducted into the Red Sox Hall of Fame in 2018.
■ RIP Joe Fitzgerald, a longtime Boston Herald columnist who died at the age of 79 in early March. A devout and devoted newspaper guy, Joe Fitz wrote Luis Tiant’s first biography and knew everything there was to know about Red Auerbach.
■ Quiz answers: 1: 1B Kevin Millar, 2B Mark Bellhorn, SS Pokey Reese, 3B Bill Mueller; 2: Chris Sale (2018, ’19), David Price (2016), Jon Lester (2011-14), David Wells (2005), Bruce Hurst (1986).