Boston Red Sox leadership shouldn’t be surprised by fans response

Boston Red Sox brass being booed at their recent Winter Weekend extravaganza over the Mookie Betts and Xander Bogaert’s situations shouldn’t have been any surprise to members of the club management.

Their actions in recent years (since firing uber-successful Dave Dombrowski) have anything but endeared the absentee owners who show up once in a blue moon for the adulation they seemingly expect. Instead, this year they got recrimination, as in booed.

Trying to pull the wool over the eyes of Red Sox Nation is an exercise in futility by the Boston Red Sox management. They pay close attention to everything you’re doing. And most of it, unfortunately, including the Betts deal and the refusal to re-sign the very popular and very good shortstop, Xander Bogaerts are two of them.

Those boos probably included lots of other questionable moves and non-moves by the Boston Red Sox over the past four off-seasons. In an old movie, “The Maltese Falcon”, actor Humphrey Bogart calls the supposedly gold falcon, “the stuff that dreams are made of” or some such thing.

In team sports, the offseason is when “the stuff that championships are made of” happens, or not. It’s more than just Betts and Bogaerts Red Sox fandom is upset about.

The Boston Red Sox offseasons have lately been mostly flops

Boston Red Sox fans expect their team that resides in a big market to act accordingly, or it seems, to sell the team. Chief Baseball Officer Chaim Bloom answered the fans’ verbal “questioning”.

Boston.com notes,

"“So where was the organization three years ago? The organization was coming off an 84-win season,” Bloom said before a fan yelled “Dave Dombrowski!” who was Bloom’s predecessor and helped the Red Sox win the World Series in 2018.He continued,“That team in 2019 had good players, but the team wasn’t good enough,” Bloom said. “There wasn’t a whole heck of a lot of coming … We could have kept going. We could have driven right off that cliff. You guys have seen big market teams do it before and end up rebuilding for half a decade. That’s not acceptable. That’s not acceptable for you guys. That can’t happen in Boston. So, what we had to do, was find a way to drive that car around before we drove off the cliff.”"

Unfortunately, driving that car has led to last place in the AL East for two of the past three seasons. Can’t get lower than that. Mr. Bloom and Mr. Henry should be keenly aware that last place isn’t exactly what Red Sox Nation is looking for. Especially since for the most part under Dombrowski the team was in first place and won a World Series.

For the Boston Red Sox, it’s all about the Benjamins

Clearly, in both the Betts/Price case (can’t forget Price’s salary being partially paid by LA was a big part of the Betts deal) and Bogaerts it was all about money.

The solid deals in the 2021 offseason were more than offset by poor ones in 2022. That year, Mr. Bloom decided to trade Hunter Renfroe and not resign Kyle Schwarber, two of his best acquisitions the previous year.

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The torn-down team then drove right to last place again in the division. So instead of rebuilding “for half a decade”, what exactly are the Red Sox attempting to do from their last-place vantage point? Stay put?

While the initial offseason with Chaim Bloom was obviously geared toward exercising the ownership’s desire to cut costs, what’s the objective now? Looks like it’s still keeping costs down (except for beer, hot dogs, etc.), and if that works be satisfied with the team finishing in last place.

Would really like to know what the Boston Red Sox’s true motivation is. If it’s to make money, fine. But as a big market team don’t you need to reinvest a solid part of those funds to keep the product up to par? Last place is not up to par in Boston.

So there you have it, the Boston Red Sox were booed by their own fans in their own venue. It’s not likely to matter much as the team has pretty much assembled its next last-place outfit.

That would be for the third time in four years. Dave Dombrowski whom they fired in 2019 won three division titles and the World Series before having a down year. He was summarily dismissed.

It is what it is, as they say in Foxborough. And in the case of the Boston Red Sox, it’s a moneymaking team that mostly finishes in last place and, evidently, could care less.