A quick perusal of social media over the weekend revealed that the Red Sox re-signing of Martin Perez may not have been the transaction that Red Sox Nation was breathlessly awaiting.
Most were --- how do we put this delicately? -- unimpressed.
The frustration is all too understandable. For fans wishing for a rebound from the team's moribund performance in 2020, bringing back a pitcher who had a 4.50 ERA wasn't going to lead to wild celebrations. Perez is a nice addition -- he pitched better than his numbers suggest, and properly slotted as a back-end starter, he'll offer value. But bringing him back merely brings the Red Sox back to ground zero.
And that, you'll recall, was squarely in the A.L. East basement, with the fourth-worst record in the game and the worst franchise record in better than 50 years.
Retaining Perez as the No. 5 starter is far better than, say, auditioning Jeffrey Springs or Chris Mazza for that role.
But again: where's the improvement?
It's likely that chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom is aware of the dissatisfaction felt by the team's fan base. He can read Twitter, and undoubtedly, the contents of his own inbox. He understands that more is expected from the franchise, and presumably, is at work on a plan, albeit one that's slow-moving.
Mollifying fans isn't part of Bloom's job description. Were it up to most, the Red Sox would have already spent big on George Springer and Trevor Bauer, while outbidding the Yankees for D.J. LeMahieu. Filling two positions up the middle along with an honest-to-goodness front-of-the-rotation starter? That would have solved a multitude of problems while rekindling interest during a winter in which they've virtually disappeared from the local sports landscape.
For all the short-term boost those signings would have delivered, however, they would have also been counterproductive in the big picture. The last thing the Sox need are three nine-figure deals, each tying them to three players in their 30s -- to say nothing of the cost of compensation draft picks and international signings money.
The Sox have been down this road before, remember. Coming off last place finishes, they've given in to temptation and spent lavishly on shiny baubles -- and come to regret it. The Hanley-Panda Era was not of the club's shining moment.
So as frustrated as fans may be with Bloom's more cautious approach, it's better than the reckless forays into free agency that have doomed the franchise in the recent past.
And Bloom shouldn't be too concerned with the reaction of the fans, either. Yes, ultimately they're his constituency and when the pandemic is over, the Red Sox are going to want paying customers to come watch the team he's assembled. But an executive giving in to the emotion that comes with being a fan is a surefire way to soon become one.
No, it's not the fans that Bloom should be worried about.
Owners? That's a different story.
It's natural that fans are restless. They want a winning team and they want the Red Sox back in championship contention, and they want both things yesterday. They see the team's ticket prices, note the team's resources and can't understand why more money isn't being thrown at the problem.
Again, all of that comes with the territory. And Bloom would be wise to politely tune out all of it out and continue with his own plan.
What if, however, they've traced the calls and found that -- gasp -- they're coming from inside the house?
It's one thing for the fans to grow impatient; it's another when the owners are the ones growing antsy.
It's happened before. Ownership swears that the front office is being entrusted to rebuild the organization, only to panic when the NESN ratings tank and empty seats in Fenway begin to multiply. They insist that they're willing to be patient, then broom aside Ben Cherington for a quick-fix like Dave Dombrowski.
It's not lost on the industry that the Sox have moved on from their last two top baseball executives less than two years removed from winning championships.
Contrary to prevailing public opinion -- and the occasional media figure who should know better -- Bloom was not brought to replicate the shoestring budgets maintained by Bloom's former employers, the Tampa Bay Rays. Such a strategy would never work here, and if there's one thing that Red Sox ownership is cognizant of, it's the perils of antagonizing the fan base by operating on the cheap.
The Sox' payroll will be down some from a year ago thanks to industry-wide losses, but it will, again, be among the top half-dozen or so in the game -- as it's been virtually every year since John Henry and Co. took over in 2002. It's fair to question the wisdom of club's spending over the last two decades, but it's foolhardy to suggest it's been inadequate.
Red Sox owners are not warily asking "How much?'' But it would be a giant concern if they started to ask, "How soon?''
Bloom was hired to give the entire organization an internal audit of sorts, from top to bottom. He was brought in to be innovative, creative and thorough. He was tasked with fixing the franchise's decade-long inability to produce homegrown starting pitching. He was charged with improving the talent at every level -- not just the 25-man roster.
All of which is going to take time. Expecting Bloom to field a winner in his second season while simultaneously restoring the minor league system isn't just too much to ask -- it's borderline impossible.
It's going to take time. Bloom will need several drafts and several forays into the international free agent market to improve the Red Sox' talent base. He'll need time for some of the better prospects to progress to the majors. And along the way, he needs to either find comparable value or bounce-back performances from a number of underachieving major league contributors.
It's perfectly OK for the fans to want some short-cuts back to contention.
It's big trouble if the owners are thinking the same thing.