Dear Boston Red Sox, ‘sustainability’ in sports is foolishness
The Boston Red Sox has adopted a “sustainability” angle in recent seasons. The ostensible rationale is to create a team that waltzes into each season with a less-than-big-market team roster with high hopes of defying the odds and actually being good.
This futile philosophy is as far-fetched as it is ill-fated. It seldom works. It’s a phony concept that seeks to do one thing and one thing only, enhance the profits of the owners.
This group while still spending a lot, has failed to grasp this stark reality. The Boston Red Sox is a top-five team historically in baseball and as such warrants and their fans deserve, a full commitment by the ownership to do one thing and one thing only, WIN!
This group formerly sought excellence and spent as though it did. Now it has evidently been determined that four championships in the new millennium are quite enough for the ever-loyal Boston fanbase. Now it’s time to really cash in (as though they hadn’t already.)
Boston Red Sox new strategy has and will fail
The Boston Red Sox in the past four off-seasons eschewed acting like a big-market team and have tried and failed to make the Red Sox the Tampa Bay Rays of the north. They’re not even as good as that penny-spending outfit.
The phony “sustainability” doctrine adopted as the modus operandi of this faltering franchise has been a dud.
They seem to fail to understand that the Boston Red Sox fanbase is the most knowledgeable, discerning, and tuned-in fanbase probably anywhere in sports. They won’t be taken in by such a callous and unprofessional strategy.
“Sustainability” in sports parlance is a euphemism for spending as little as you can and still trying to be competitive. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. “Sustainable” teams like the Tampa Bay Rays don’t win championships. Big-market, big-spending teams do.
Boston Red Sox owners thrive on the acquiescence of the fanbase
Boston Red Sox supporters who buy into this fake policy are being fleeced by the team owners. They grab more and more profit with every ticket, hot dog, pretzel, and beer sold while telling the fans to politely, “kiss off”.
The proof in the pudding is that the current team while preaching “sustainability’ still can’t deliver farmhands with a few exceptions to contribute. Case in point, who’s the last drafted starting pitcher who’s had any impact whatsoever? Says here, Jon Lester, and he was drafted more than two decades ago.
In addition, the team still incredibly winds up spending a ton of cash on their band-aid approach (literally in many cases), throwing good money after bad on injury-risk players all over the diamond.
The results in the past three seasons after the ouster of tremendously successful President of Baseball Operations Dave Dombrowski have been predictably appalling.
Next. Boston Red Sox: Spring baseball and everlasting hope in 2023. dark
Absent the unexpected and almost unfathomable run of the makeshift team that thrilled Boston in 2021 all the way to the ALCS (and then was summarily dismantled), the other two years of “sustainability” have delivered atrocious last-place finishes.
As always, however, one must include a caveat this observation may be wrong. Hope so, and will eat a large portion of crow (tastes like chicken) if it is.
Yet, assemble a great team in the offseason, and absent catastrophic injuries, things will likely go well. If not, like the 2023 Boston Red Sox, they probably won’t.
Expect little in 2023 and you won’t be disappointed. Yet, as they say, that’s why they play the games. We’ll see.