For Sox, timing wasn’t right to go ‘all-in’
They chose to defer on a roster ‘splash’
FORT MYERS, Fla. — Nearly five months ago, as the Red Sox introduced Craig Breslow as their new chief baseball officer, they raised expectations for an ambitious offseason, particularly a rotation overhaul.
The actual roster-building ran very much counter to that. One after the other, anticipated pursuits of pitchers such as Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Aaron Nola, Blake Snell, and Jordan Montgomery gave way to the reality of non-pursuits and modest maneuvers. Breslow’s first offseason in charge of baseball operations has gone without a so-called big splash.
Why not? And more broadly, when is the right time to dive into the deep end and make blockbuster moves to upgrade the roster?
“Oof,” exhaled Orioles general manager Mike Elias. “That is just a case-by-case topic.”
It’s a subject with which organizations wrestle, with theory and practice rarely aligning perfectly.
“Where is the organization?” said former Rangers president of baseball operations Jon Daniels, now a Rays vice president. “What do you have coming? And is this the right guy to build on?
“Some of these factors you can’t always control. Sometimes I think we want the timing to be absolutely right. It’s great if it is, but it rarely is.”
In broad brushstrokes, the Sox acknowledge that their moves this offseason were made with a determination to improve — or at least not harm — their longer-term outlook. While they have identified cornerstone players such as Rafael Devers, Triston Casas, and Brayan Bello, they are waiting for others — big leaguers such as Ceddanne Rafaela or Wilyer Abreu or Garrett Whitlock, or minor leaguers such as Marcelo Mayer, Roman Anthony, and Kyle Teel — to establish themselves.
“How quickly and to what magnitude guys take steps forward, that to me is what determines when we’re at this point where we say we are committed to potentially sacrificing future wins for now wins,” said Breslow.
Breslow isn’t alone in such a view. Under president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman, the Dodgers spent several years building a player-development monster before they started taking top-of-the-market swings, beginning with the trade for Mookie Betts in 2020.
The Blue Jays behaved cautiously for years while waiting for their farm system to mature. But once Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette arrived, and with other young talents on the horizon, they flipped a switch, signing Hyun-Jin Ryu, George Springer, Kevin Gausman, José Berríos, and
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Chris Bassitt between the 2019-20 and 2022-23 offseasons.
Elias and the Orioles saw a strong group of homegrown players, led by Adley Rutschman and with a late-season cameo from Gunnar Henderson, arrive in 2022. But in the winter of 2022-23, they had enough roster holes that they held off on major moves with a small-market budget.
After more homegrown players took leaps forward in a 101-win season in 2023, and with fewer roster holes, the Orioles took a different approach this offseason, trading for starter Corbin Burnes.
“It’s good to let the critical mass present itself organically if you can and then supplement around it,” said Elias. “But some people don’t have that luxury of time to do that.”
The Twins entered a different phase of their building cycle once they’d amassed homegrown and/or young (and inexpensive) talent such as Byron Buxton, Max Kepler, Jorge Polanco, and Joe Ryan. By the 2021-22 offseason, they felt ready to take some financial plunges — exploring a deal with Trevor Story before signing Carlos Correa.
“You want to have some good young players that are part of your future that are ready to pop on the major league scene,” said Twins president of baseball operations Derek Falvey. “In a perfect world, they’re going to be part of the team that year. And then you can surround [the core] with some usually veteran talent.
“If that’s plus or minus a year, that’s OK, too. In some cases, maybe you want to set yourself up with some veteran talent that’s going to help nurture the culture in the environment and then have those guys step into it.”
The Harper case
Of course, there are successful builds that have been pushed forward by a willingness to add veterans in advance of the big league arrival of a core. The Phillies’ signing of Bryce Harper before the 2019 season represented a stake in the ground, but Philadelphia didn’t emerge as a powerhouse until 2022. Still, at 26, Harper was a force around whom the team could build for years.
Harper also represented a signal to the fan base of the team’s intentions — and a reminder that allin blockbuster additions are sometimes pushed, or even dictated, by owners.
In the 2018-19 offseason, Phillies owner John Middleton — coming off an 80-82 season, but with a farm system years from offering needed depth — promised that his team would spend aggressively, and “maybe even be a little bit stupid about it.”
Harper energized and sustained the franchise over the next three years until further additions allowed the team to return to October in 2022.
Former Red Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski wasn’t with the Phillies when they signed Harper, but he has been the beneficiary of both the two-time All-Star and the chance to spend Middleton’s money on players such as Trea Turner and Kyle Schwarber.
“Owners can do whatever they want . . . It’s their money,” said Dombrowski. “You have to be on board with your ownership for when you want to [make all-in moves], what your goals are shortterm or long-term, what’s your financial viability to sign and add players.”
Daniels and the Rangers spent $500 million on Corey Seager and Marcus Semien after a 2021 season in which they went 60-102. They didn’t think they were ready to contend (they went 68-94 in 2022 and Daniels was fired), but saw a core coming and didn’t want to wait to add bedrock players.
With help from young standouts such as Josh Jung and eventually Evan Carter, Seager and Semien became the leaders of a team that won last year’s World Series.
“There was a good group coming and we needed the big boys in the middle,” said Daniels. “It was the right class. Those guys were available. They’re not available every year.
“We went a year early just because those players aren’t available every year and they were the right guys for that group, and we also we wanted them to help establish the culture that we were looking to build.”
The misfire in 2015
Of course, signing big-dollar veterans to serve as a bridge while cores develop isn’t always a winning strategy.
In some ways, the Red Sox find themselves in a comparable position to where they were in the 2014-15 offseason — coming off a last-place finish, with talented-but-not-yet-established players in the big leagues (Xander Bogaerts, Betts) and more coming in the minors. They tried to accelerate the build cycle by signing Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval, spending a combined $183 million.
Moves that looked like big splashes ended up being belly-flops. The Sox finished in last again in 2015, and they danced around the sunk cost of those contracts and other bad ones in future years.
“Sometimes you make big splashes that don’t work,” winced Sox CEO/president Sam Kennedy.
“It didn’t work out great,” agreed Breslow, a pitcher for the 2015 team. “Did it not work out great exclusively because of the decisions around those players, because of the opportunity cost of resources spent on those players and not others, because of the playing-time constraints it may have placed on just the overall availability of innings and at-bats? It’s hard to know.”
Of course, it’s worth noting that the signings of Ramirez and Sandoval didn’t prevent the Sox from emerging as a powerhouse from 2016-18 — with a title led by homegrown standouts Betts, Bogaerts, Andrew Benintendi, and Jackie Bradley Jr., supplemented by the further all-in moves for David Price, Chris Sale, and J.D. Martinez.
The Sox seemingly envision a future where they again supplement a broad talent base of young standouts with win-now moves to add stars. But entering 2024, the Sox’ answer to the question of the right timing for an all-in move is: Not now.
It is a time, Breslow hopes, that is analogous to 2015 in another way. While Betts and Bogaerts had established themselves as pillars by the middle of that season, by the end others — Bradley, Eduardo Rodriguez, Rick Porcello, among others — took advantage of playing time to assert themselves as part of a winning foundation that could be supplemented by a few significant moves.
But to get there, the team will hitch its 2024 fortunes to the development of players who have yet to establish what they will — or won’t — be in the big leagues.
“Where we are today is committed to giving these guys the runway to go out and play, trying to determine which of these guys — I’m very confident there are some and maybe many — that we want to build around,” said Breslow. “But the only way to determine that is to have them play.”