Texas Rangers winning a title should be a lesson to new Red Sox baseball chief
I’d imagine more than a few folks connected to the Red Sox were rooting for Mike Hazen and Torey Lovullo to bring home a World Series title with the Arizona Diamondbacks.
They were popular executive and trusted field staff member during their days in Boston, and they delivered an underdog to within three victories of the ultimate prize. Hazen’s story is particularly moving — the passing of his wife, Nicole, after an extended fight against brain cancer left him a single father to their four children.
As it pertains to the immediate future at Fenway Park, the Texas Rangers capturing their first championship in franchise history is better news. This was a spending, trading, bold enterprise that beat out a roster constructed largely through drafting and developing.
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The Red Sox used to employ that first strategy. Their pivot to the second over the last four years has been a failure, and chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom paid for it with his job in September. Craig Breslow was unveiled Thursday morning in the Back Bay with the promise of going back to something more resembling the good old days.
Boston has won four World Series since 2004 with payrolls ranking second, second, third and first in the sport, according to Cot’s Contracts. There’s no point in having big-market muscles if you’re not going to flex them hard and often. Breslow, chairman Tom Werner and president/CEO Sam Kennedy promised a return to relevancy in the coming months.
“I know what it means to win in Boston,” Breslow said at his introductory press conference. “Fans deserve a standard of quality and consistency.”
The hope, of course, is that Breslow will prove a better fit in the market than Bloom. As a Connecticut native, former left-handed pitcher with the Red Sox and champion with the club in 2013, he has a first-hand appreciation of just how good it can be here. There is an obvious difference between the thirst for champagne and actually having tasted it.
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Which brings us back to Texas, a club that endured six straight losing seasons before this remarkable breakthrough. The Rangers spent $500 million on their middle infield, $185 million on a pitcher who didn’t make an appearance against Arizona and traded a prized prospect for another right-hander who recorded a total of 29 outs in three playoff appearances.
Those moves are the exact opposite of anything Boston would have done beginning in 2020. And the Red Sox were among those watching Wednesday night while Texas — with Corey Seager, Marcus Semien, Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer — celebrated at Chase Field. It was an appropriate reward.
The Rangers closed eighth this season in terms of Competitive Balance Tax payroll, the ninth time since 2012 a team in the top nine has won a title. Boston sunk to 12th while spending roughly $20 million less than Texas. That extra cash could have been used to make a better final offer to new ring winner Nathan Eovaldi, convince Zach Eflin to reject the Rays, add some needed pitching help or a right-handed bat at the trade deadline in August — any number of avenues that could have avoided another last-place finish in the American League East.
Bloom was ideologically devoted to building his core from within, a philosophy endorsed and sought out by principal owner John Henry. The Rangers counted just five homegrown players who filled key roles against the Diamondbacks — three with 10 at-bats or more, two who made appearances on the mound. It was the exact opposite of the vision sold here as the only way back to consistent contention.
Do you honestly believe any Texas fan will be complaining about Seager’s contract in 2029? If that’s the case, dismiss them. Winning at this level is priceless and impossibly hard to do. Believing you can set up some full-proof simulation to repeat time and again over a decade or more is suspending reality.
The truth about professional sports is championships are like lightning strikes. You can predict and prepare and offer any number of contingencies, but the moment to capitalize passes just as quickly as it arrives. Ask anyone who was in Boston’s cratering clubhouse in September 2011 if they saw any conclusion other than a title even a few weeks earlier — their answers would be unanimous.
There will always be elements of waste and risk on the payroll. The Red Sox were committed to roughly $56.5 million for Dustin Pedroia, Drew Pomeranz, Tyler Thornburg, Pablo Sandoval and Rusney Castillo in 2018. That didn’t prevent Boston, as a team with something approaching the most resources available in the game, from acquiring the likes of Eovaldi, Steve Pearce and Ian Kinsler on the way to 119 wins and its latest share of October glory.
That next time the Red Sox raise a trophy seems far off in the distance. The Rangers just reminded us, with true commitment and a willingness to prioritize the present, that it doesn’t have to be.
On X: @BillKoch25
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Red Sox should take lesson from Texas Rangers winning the World Series
