Four wins separated the Boston Red Sox from the Texas Rangers heading into the “Midsummer Classic” last July. The local nine sat in last place in the AL East, but trailed the Toronto Blue Jays and Houston Astros by two games for the final AL Wild Card spot.
Three weeks later at the trade deadline, the Rangers, Astros and Blue Jays all made the decision to bring in reinforcements. Texas brought in Max Scherzer and Jordan Montgomery, Houston reunited with Justin Verlander and Toronto picked up Jordan Hicks and Paul DeJong.
The Red Sox made the decision to bring in Luis Urias.
How’d that turn out? The Rangers, Astros and Blue Jays all went on to play postseason baseball. Texas and Houston were among the last four standing and slugged it out in a heavyweight AL Championship Series.
Then the Rangers went on to win the first World Series title in their 63-year franchise history.
And how ‘bout them Sox? Urias hit .225 in 32 games and the season slowly deflated into another last-place finish. Hey, there’s always next year…
“We Play To Win Championships”
Why did the Rangers, Astros and even Blue Jays decide to go for it while Chaim Bloom sat on his hands?
Texas skipper Bruce Bochy put it best: "We're here to win. And it's always a great message when a team does something like this.”
Clearly, the Red Sox were not here to win. But they also weren’t here to be sellers either. That style of hedging — similar to Danny Ainge near the end with the Celtics — isn’t likely to lead to a winner now or in the future. And it’s a big reason why Bloom is no longer here.
Hopefully Craig Breslow was paying attention. It seems he was, as he took a veiled shot at Bloom’s inaction in his introductory press conference, saying "if you enter this position trying to hedge, trying to understand what it would look like to fail, you’re taking the wrong approach.”
Which direction the Breslow administration sets a course for remains to be seen. Ownership certainly seemed to suggest the gunslinging Red Sox of old would make a return with some big offseason splashes, yet some of Breslow’s comments about exploring all options tempered that optimism.
What we know for certain is this: the Texas Rangers are World Series champions. They’re the latest team to set the standard of what it takes to win in baseball. And the way they won was by pushing their chips to the center of the table.
An “all in” approach isn’t the only way to have success in this league, but it’s certainly the easiest if you have the money — and you’re willing to spend it. The Rangers did, and they are in position to be contenders for the immediate future because of it.
And they didn’t go all in using their entire stockpile — just all in on their hand for this season. Even after trading away three top 30 prospects, Texas’ remained a top 10 farm system in MLB.com’s midseason rankings — down only three spots from the preseason ranking.
Breslow’s job is to put together a winner at the big league level. He knows that and seems eager to do it. But the best way to sustain success is to blend spending the big bucks with producing your own homegrown talent — something Bloom failed at (or wasn’t given the luxury to do).
His work must begin by earnestly assessing if the talent on the major league roster is good enough to compete for a title with. Currently, the answer is a clear “no.” Sure, the Red Sox have some good players and pieces to build around. They may not have been a “good” team last season, but they weren’t a terrible one either. And that’s what made their inaction at the trade deadline so frustrating.
Who’s to say the Red Sox wouldn’t be the ones holding another championship parade had they embraced the Texas way at the deadline?
Perhaps adding a Scherzer, Verlander or Montgomery wouldn’t have pushed them over the top, but it’s hard to believe it wouldn’t have energized the team and given them that extra oomph to make it into the postseason where anything can happen.
Verdugone?
What’s going on with Alex Verdugo, you ask? Is he staying or is he going? When there’s as much smoke surrounding a potential trade of the cornerstone of the Mookie Betts trade, it’s hard to believe Verdugo won’t be moved sooner than later.
Verdugo is a fun player and clubhouse presence (perhaps too much fun?). His ceiling as a player is that of a borderline All-Star. It’s clear his personality clashed with the Red Sox brass — at least his manager Alex Cora, who Breslow said was “unequivocally” coming back to manage in 2024.
It’s always more fun when your team is full of likable guys. We learned as much when the Red Sox had a team full of unlikable guys in 2011. But what’s even less fun than a team of unlikable guys is a team full of likable guys that doesn’t win. Winning is always more fun no matter the character of who’s on your team (case in point, David Price in 2018).
As much as we all like Verdugo, he is an expendable part for a team with a growing stable of outfielders. If you could flip him for a major league-ready pitcher, that would help to advance the cause more than holding onto a player of Verdugo’s caliber.
Sorry, Dugie.
Turning the page
I often said to colleagues in the press box throughout last season that it’s a shame Justin Turner couldn’t have joined the Red Sox earlier in his career.
He is about as likable a guy as they come — and a man of high character, too. His nightly jog out to the outfield to greet the honored veteran of the night at Fenway Park with a handshake and a baseball (when he wasn’t leading off the next inning) would always make me smile.
I remember walking away from my first postgame interview scrum with Turner being impressed with his demeanor. This was a guy that could handle the Boston media with class and grace.
And not only was he a good guy — he was still a good player, too. Turner’s age 38 season was very productive. To turn in a career-year in your 15th big league season says something about your work ethic.
As much as I loved J.D. Martinez and hoped the team would re-sign him (as a side note, do you remember the Bob Ryan radio spot where he rhapsodized about how hard it was to follow up David Ortiz as a DH in Boston and how well J.D. filled those shoes? Well said, Bob.), bringing in Turner as a replacement was a savvy move and likely the best of the Bloom era.
Turner embraced Boston, and Boston embraced Turner. He was everything you’d want a Boston baseball player to be. It’s a shame he couldn’t have been a lifelong Red Sox.
Kluber punches out
It felt like the Red Sox had been linked to Corey Kluber for the better part of the past decade. They finally made their dreams come true last offseason when they inked the two-time Cy Young Award winner to a potential multi-year deal.
One year later, the Red Sox told Kluber to take a hike.
At the time I thought Kluber would be a slight upgrade over Rich Hill, but it turns out the Sox would’ve been better off just bringing Hill back.
Like Turner, Kluber was a true professional and a class act in the clubhouse. But he never found any traction on the mound and it quickly became clear that the career of one of the best pitchers of the 2010s had effectively reached its conclusion.
Some moves work out and some don’t. Here’s hoping Breslow will orchestrate more of the former than the latter…
Gethin Coolbaugh is a contributor to Boston Sports Journal. Follow him @GethinCoolbaugh on X/Twitter.