Wednesday, October 5 marked the official end of the 2022 Boston Red Sox season, and thank god for that.
The Red Sox of this time last year are a distant memory in fans’ heads at this point. As a refresher, last season, the Red Sox finished with a record of 92-70 and came within two games of a World Series appearance. Going into their final game, this year’s Red Sox team has a record of 77-84 and is in last place in the AL East.
For the Sox fans who were in a coma all season or tuned out at some point, you may be asking how the team got into this position.
Bad pitching costs the Boston Red Sox a lot of games
The Red Sox pitching is one of the main reasons why the Sox are not going any further into October this year. Boston is tied with the Oakland Athletics for the sixth highest ERA in MLB with 4.54, compared to a league average of 3.94. The Sox also had the 12th lowest strikeouts in the league and the seventh highest WHIP.
It’s hard to reconcile those statistics with the massive Red Sox payroll this year of $221 million, according to FanGraphs, a payroll that includes large contracts for pitchers like Nathan Eovaldi ($17 million) and Chris Sale ($30 million). Compare that to a team like the Oakland Athletics, tied with the Sox in ERA this year, who have a payroll of $50 million.
Chris Sale’s impact on the Red Sox this year deserves its own article. He’s the highest-paid player on the Red Sox, yet he only started two games this season because of a couple of fluke injuries. The lack of a real ace in the rotation (we can argue about Eovaldi in the comments if you want) makes me think that Chaim Bloom and the Fenway brass were under the impression that Sale would be able to make a good portion of his starts this season.
Constructing a starting pitching rotation on the pipe dream that Chris Sale will be healthy for most of his starts is like buying a sports car under the assumption that you have a winning lottery ticket.
The Boston Red Sox were stuck in one of the most competitive divisions
The Boston Red Sox had the misfortune of being an okay team in a great division.
In previous years in the AL East, a mediocre Sox team could have fought their way to a .500 record or maybe a Wild Card spot, but in 2022 every team in the AL East (besides the Red Sox, of course) was a legitimate contender.
The Red Sox can’t even use the Baltimore Orioles for easy wins anymore. Every division foe is serious about winning and has legitimate talent on their roster.
Boston had a 25-50 record within their division. Only the Washington Nationals and the Pittsburgh Pirates had a worse in-division record. If the Sox had managed to be only a .500 team within their division, they would’ve had the third-best record in the division and the second Wild Card spot.
Hopefully this will become less of an issue next year with the MLB releasing a more balanced schedule with less interdivisional play.
Chaim Bloom made many controversial decisions that hurt the Sox this year
The third reason and likely most broad reason for the poor performance of the Red Sox this year is poor decision-making by Chief Baseball Officer Chaim Bloom.
You could point to any number of things, but I think you can narrow it down to two major missteps by Bloom, and they both happened before the season even started. Those would be the decision not to re-sign Kyle Schwarber and the decision to trade Hunter Renfroe.
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It’s hard to know for sure what happened in the Schwarber negotiation process, but Schwarber told reporters at this year’s All-Star games that there weren’t meaningful conversations with the Red Sox on returning to Boston. The smart move would’ve been to sign Schwarber to the contract he wanted (which ended up being $19.75 million for four years) and allow him to take over for JD Martinez as the designated hitter.
The Hunter Renfroe deal, even at the time it was first reported, was a head-scratching one. Despite being a fan favorite from his time on the 2018 World Series team, Jackie Bradley Jr. had a more expensive contract than Renfroe and was a significant step down as a hitter. There is no logical reason why the Boston Red Sox needed to trade Renfroe.
Why would Chaim Bloom, who thought little enough of JBJ not to resign him in 2020 and then DFA him after the trade deadline this season, trade for him? The obvious answer is the minor leaguers that Milwaukee sent to Boston in the deal, but trading a top player to boost your farm system shouldn’t be the mentality of a rising team coming off of an ALCS appearance.
It certainly would’ve helped Boston to retain those players, who hit a combined 75 home runs this year.