Red Sox doing little to get fans interested after two lackluster seasons

Hours after the Red Sox watched the Yankees agree to deals with marquee free agents DJ LeMahieu and Corey Kluber on Friday night, an email popped into my inbox.

"I was really looking forward to baseball season this year but I'll lose interest fast if the Sox just go through the motions again," the reader wrote. "And I won't be alone."

Curious if other Red Sox fans were feeling similarly, I shared the quote on Twitter and asked if anyone could relate. By Sunday morning, the tweet had been seen 137,000 times, interacted with by 3,000 people and there were more than 100 replies.

The reader who sent the email certainly wasn't alone. Red Sox fans are tired. They watched their team look overly confident while playing the 2019 season without urgency.

They watched Dave Dombrowski get fired, John Henry claim he didn't see eye-to-eye with Dombrowski (despite signing off on long-term contracts for Nathan Eovaldi, Chris Sale and Xander Bogaerts), Chaim Bloom get hired and Mookie Betts get traded. The 2020 season was embarrassing. The on-field product was painful to watch. Once again, the team was not competitive.

Here we are, just a few weeks before pitchers and catchers report to Fort Myers, and the Red Sox are once again testing their fanbase's patience and loyalty.

The Yankees are getting better. The Rays have lost a lot of talent (Blake Snell, Charlie Morton and Jose Alvarado among them) but have one of the game's best farm systems to replenish from.

The Red Sox have added nobody of interest. They've signed Matt Andriese.

They re-signed Martin Perez. They've otherwise been quiet.

With teams spooked because of the pandemic, there are still a lot of free agents left. There are trades to be made. But on paper, the Red Sox are not good enough to compete with the Rays or the Yankees.

"I'm still gonna watch because I love the team but this team makes it hard to believe that they have an interest in winning," one fan replied on Twitter. "Their actions are killing interest in baseball in Boston."

Dozens agreed. And it's hard to wonder if the Red Sox understand how much they're asking from their fanbase if they expect them to remain interested throughout the summer and into the fall with an underwhelming team.

The logical explanation is that the Red Sox front office and ownership group believes that the return of Alex Cora is all they need, that Sale will recover from Tommy John surgery and return to form quickly, that Eduardo Rodriguez's myocarditis won't get in the way and that Nathan Eovaldi will finally stay healthy.

Cora's personality can lure some players from free agency, they're betting.

Perhaps Cora's management of the bullpen can make up for the lack of depth. And his coaching and mentoring will help bring out the best from Rafael Devers' defense, Andrew Benintendi's bat and some prospects' confidence.

It's a lot to ask. The last time they saw Cora manage, his team wildly underperformed after he took a laissez-faire approach to spring training.

Since then, Betts, David Price and Brandon Workman were traded, Sale and Benintendi got hurt and their three best lefties (Rodriguez, Darwinzon Hernandez and Josh Taylor) contracted the coronavirus.

"As far as the pitching, I do believe we're deeper than actually '19 and what the team was last year," Cora said on MLB Network Radio on Sunday. "Little by little, the front office did a good job during the season last year and the offseason to add some quality arms, some intriguing arms."

That's certainly debatable, but at least Cora sees something in them.

"This puzzle is not completed," he said. "We have to be patient. But we're going to be better."

Since the start of 2019, the Sox are 108-114 (.486) while the Rays and Yankees are each 136-86 (.613) while collectively winning 23 playoff games to the Red Sox' zero.

And the Sox have done little to close the gap.

Some might call that "going through the motions."