Ugly season risks long-term damage to Sox’ winning culture
There's a reason why the best franchises in the big leagues are wary of tanking, even when it makes sense to do so.
Losing is contagious. It's addicting. And the minute it becomes acceptable, the franchise risks carrying the stink of failure with it for the foreseeable future.
Fans will lose interest. Free agents won't want to sign there. Prospects won't have anything to aspire to.
And the competitive culture that Xander Bogaerts was brought into as a 20-year-old in 2013 will fade away in favor of one that screams, "any pitcher released by another team is welcome to play here."
"Being thrown into the playoff race in 2013, that was tough, you know?" Bogaerts said Friday. "Every game meant something. I think we got called up in a different type of situation (than players this year) . ... It sucks for these guys to be able to make their debuts and not have the fan perspective of the pressure and how amazing it is for all those seats to be filled up. Hopefully we can get back to that soon."
The Red Sox have made two critical sins in their approach to the 2020 season.
First, they brought in a brand new leader of the front office, Chaim Bloom, to trade one of their best players in franchise history.
The Arizona Diamondbacks did something similar, when they traded Paul Goldschmidt two years after Mike Hazen arrived from Boston to take over the front office. Hazen's right-hand man, Amiel Sawdaye, told the Herald the key was not trading Goldschmidt in the first year.
"The first year is a tough year," Sawdaye said in 2019. "Anytime you walk in and trade somebody without knowing them, it's a pretty bad, a pretty tough thing to do."
But the Diamondbacks followed up the trade by acquiring other quality players. It wasn't a full-on rebuild. They didn't tank largely because Hazen learned from his time in Boston that tanking is dangerous, and going into a season without a deep roster of big league players puts you at risk for the kind of season the Red Sox are having right now.
"I think that's important long-term for the future of the organization, too, is that the culture of winning is something you can't just say," Hazen said last year. "You have to be able to go out there and try to do it too."
The Sox planned on going into the 2020 season with Chris Sale, Eduardo Rodriguez, Nathan Eovaldi and Martin Perez as their top four starters. But they had no depth. And they never addressed it. When Sale underwent Tommy John surgery, the Sox never replaced him. And when Rodriguez unexpectedly suffered a heart condition related to the coronavirus, the Sox never replaced him (claiming other team's designated players doesn't count, because it obviously doesn't work).
Losing two more pitchers to the virus (Darwinzon Hernandez and Josh Taylor) made this pitching staff one that required not just a few patches, but a giant makeover, and one that the Red Sox never wanted to go through.
That's how you end up with a 178 loss like Thursday's, when the Sox ended the game with their backup catcher on the mound, their starting catcher at second base and their utility infielder behind the plate.
Losing is addicting when it becomes accepted, and that's the risk with Thursday's loss.
All the excuses, even the most legitimate of the bunch, can't erase the stain of a team that learns to accept losing.
While the pitchers allow more runs than anyone else in the American League and the offensive players realize that scoring six runs a game is merely the baseline to go .500, they stop caring. Even if they don't want to, some will.
"You just have to be there for your teammates, especially at a time like this," Bogaerts said. "When you see guys with their heads down, you just have to go and remind them that you're here for them and anything that they need and you want to see them succeed so bad."
One of the reasons Bogaerts has been so successful is that the culture of winning was already installed into the fabric of the Red Sox when he arrived.
Dustin Pedroia and David Ortiz and Jon Lester made sure of it. And when the Sox struggled in 2014 and 2015, Bogaerts knew that it wasn't acceptable. Even as a 21- and 22-year-old, he was the one standing in front of his locker after another disappointing loss to hold himself and his team accountable.
The risk of tanking
Look across the big leagues at the best franchises in the game's history, and you'll see a clear avoidance of tanking. The Washington Post's Thomas Boswell summarized it well in a column last year:
"The Boston Red Sox have had only one season with more than 93 loses since 1932. Baseball-loving Cincinnati has seen only one Reds team lose 100 games since its inception in 1882. Baseball in Los Angeles draws huge crowds. Sure, it's sunny. But entertainment competition is huge. The Dodgers and Angels, in a combined 121 seasons in L.A., have had only one team that lost more than 95 games.
The Yankees, a special case to be sure, haven't lost 100 since they were the Highlanders in 1912. The "best fans in baseball?" Maybe St. Louis. The last Cardinals team to lose even 95 games was in — come on, guess — 1913."
Tanking destroys the culture unless there's a clear long-term plan set forth by the front office, communicated to the manager and field staff, and then properly digested by a roster that needs to buy in while simultaneously giving their all to the season at hand.
That's not even close to what the Red Sox are doing.
The only bright side is that Sale is finding optimism in his recovery from Tommy John surgery. He's enjoying himself in Fort Myers, where he's commuting to JetBlue Park from his nearby home and entering every day with a smile and positive attitude. He wants to play for 10 more years.
The Sox ought to be thankful he isn't around their decaying group in Boston, because they need at least one smiling face to recruit any potential free agents this winter, when the stink of this putrid season isn't going to fade quickly.
Asked about the fear of creating a losing culture before the Sox' series with the Yankees this weekend, manager Ron Roenicke fought back.
"It's not at the point now where I really need to address it because I still see the way the guys are," he said. "They aren't happy with this losing. I still see the effort level, I still see how they prepare going into every single game we play. And the attitude, what they talk about before the game, and it's still been good.
"We realize coming into it, when we lost the two starters we lost, we realized pitching could be a difficulty. We were still hoping some of these guys would get locked in and able to fill those spots. But they know we need to swing the bat well . ... So at this point I don't think I need to address that part. I'm just hoping things turn around, and quickly, and hopefully I won't have to have that conversation."