How Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics and Bruins handle home grown talent
Boston Red Sox
The Boston Red Sox have a history of both paying and trading their players, but it has mostly depended on who the GM or head of Baseball Operations is.
Since 2000 we’ve seen Theo Epstein, Ben Cherington, Dave Dombrowski, and now Chaim Bloom all make important baseball decisions for the Red Sox.
Epstein is more credible for some of the players he has brought into Boston through free agency, rather than players he landed in the draft. Epstein is responsible for much of the recent success of the Boston Red Sox.
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Theo is responsible for the hiring of Terry Francona and drafting monumental figures in Red Sox history like Dustin Pedroia, and Jacoby Ellsbury. Epstein has built winning teams by bringing in players like Bill Mueller, Kevin Millar, Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett, Curt Schilling, Mike Lowell, and of course, David Ortiz.
In 2014, Cherington put together a deal that sent one of the most loved players and leaders on the team in Jon Lester to Oakland in exchange for Yoeneis Cespedes. Lester went on to be a key contributing factor in the 2016 season and helped win a World Series with the Chicago Cubs.
In 2016, Dave Dombrowski gave David Price an outrageous seven-year, $217 million contract, which is the richest for a pitcher in MLB history, and last year, after a great 2018 season, he gave Chris Sale a five-year, $145 million contract.
Dombrowski’s negotiations with just those two players are now negatively impacting the Red Sox.
One of the best decisions that Dombrowski made in Boston was getting a deal done with Xander Bogaerts. Bogaerts agreed to a six-year, $120 million contract through 2025. It made sense for the Red Sox to lock up one of the best offensive short-stops in baseball.
Now jump to 2020, the Chaim Bloom era for the Red Sox. Although it has just begun, Bloom quickly made his mark in the history of Boston sports by trading away Mookie Betts (arguably the second best player in the MLB) to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
It’s hard to see the trend in how the Red Sox make these types of decisions. Mostly being because they have had four different executives making important franchise decisions throughout the last twenty years.