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Sunday, July 31, 2022

DHL Dan CXXXIII - The Bridge That Wasn't

Shank's very pleased with himself, coming up with a new catchphrase that we'll hear about for the rest of the season:
Red Sox fans should be aware that this might not be a bridge year, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while wondering whether the Red Sox should be relegated . . .

▪ In a small moment after Wednesday’s 7-6 loss to the Guardians, lowlighted by Franchy Cordero’s three errors at first base, Alex Cora said, “He’s still learning the position. He hasn’t played too much at first base.”

There it is right there. Red Sox ownership/management has given Cora a roster peppered with interchangeable guys who should be learning their craft in Triple A while at the same time claiming the organization is still committed to winning this year.

Summary: You are paying the highest ticket prices in baseball to watch minor league players learning on the job.

And a lot of you are OK with this because, well, these Red Sox bosses won four championships in this century and we don’t want to be like those stupid first-place Dodgers, Yankees, and Mets who waste all their money signing stars to long-term contracts.

It’s been bad at every level.

Three years in, can we all acknowledge that the Mookie Betts salary dump was one of the worst moves in modern Sox history? It was the warning shot that the Sox won’t keep their stars anymore and are more about the illusion of contention (boosted by the phony, inflated playoff format) than about winning.
That's the new 'tomato cans' in the Shank lexicon.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a fraud. Did Dan say this when Harry Sinden ran the Bruins like this because we all know he was silent when he said nothing to Sinden while Bruins fans saw Bourque being traded to get his cup while we wait impatiently to contend for a cup that never happened when Sinden was GM

FenFan said...

Fact: the Dodgers, Yankees, and Mets have combined for TWO world championships since 2001, while the Red Sox have won four. Shank seems to have forgotten that tidbit of information in his analysis. He's also forgotten that several players have spent considerable time on the IL, which is why players like Cordero are getting more playing than they (probably) deserve.

Losing Betts was tough, but the Dodgers had room under the luxury tax threshold, while the Red Sox did not and had not been under that threshold for more than a few seasons, and it is structured to increase the longer a team stays above it. Obviously, the front office hoped that he might take the "hometown discount," and I don't blame either side for what happened.

I can say this: while there's no guarantee that Devers will be here after the end of next season, at least Boston and Bloom are doing what they can to get themselves into position to afford what he may command, and hopefully without emptying the farm of talent as Dombrowski did.