With Drake Maye set to begin his NFL career in earnest on Sunday, Craig Breslow and the Red Sox front office might want to pay attention.
Not to how well Maye plays, but to how the New England Patriots are handling their crown jewel and prospective franchise cornerstone. In the Pats’ handling of the Maye situation, there are lessons to be learned by the Sox.
Both good and bad.
The crown jewel of the Sox isn’t just one player, of course. It’s the trio of Roman Anthony, Marcelo Mayer and Kyle Teel. Like the Patriots with Maye, the Sox have pushed their chips all in on the “Big 3.”
And unlike the Patriots, who seemingly moved the goalposts and expedited the timeline for Maye’s debut, the Red Sox have stuck to their plan with Anthony, Mayer and Teel. Whether or not that’s to their credit, it remains to be seen…
But there is value in having a plan, especially for a franchise like the Red Sox that’s been mired in retool/rebuild mode for the past half-decade. It’s one thing to have a plan, though, and it’s another to stick with it… or to know when not to stick to it.
It remains a possibility that the Sox will say “ready or not, here they come” and toss the Big 3 into the fire early next season. There’s nothing that replicates learning how to play in the majors like, well… playing in the majors. No matter what age or how much minor league experience you have, you’re going to take your lumps early on at the next level.
So why not start the clock early to work out the kinks for a core of players who are vital to the future of the Red Sox?
I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the case come next spring, given that the Sox seem to view the Big 3 as a single marketing entity after promoting them all at once to Worcester in the final month of the season.
One commonality the Sox and Pats share is their ability to go out and spend… unfortunately coupled with a lack of willingness to do it.
But here’s where the Sox can do things a little better than the Patriots, who had the opportunity to bring in offensive line help and playmakers like Brandon Aiyuk for Maye to work with right off the bat — but didn’t.
Instead of throwing Anthony, Mayer and Teel out to the wolves to sink or swim and needing to rely on them heavily to have any chance at success next season, Breslow and Co. could soften the load by actually, finally bringing in some veteran talent to ease the burden.
It’s something they did well in 2018, when the Mookie Betts, J.D. Martinez-es and Xander Bogaerts of the world carrying the bulk of the workload while a talented young up-and-comer named Rafael Devers was finding his way.
So if the front office wants to jumpstart the Big 3 era as soon as next season, that’s fine by me. But if you don’t do the work to construct a capable support system around them, you’re only prolonging your — and their (and our) — suffering.
Future is now?
The good news for Red Sox fans is that the team might finally be planning to operate like a team that believes it has entered its window to compete and win.
Breslow suggested as much this past week when he told NESN’s “310 To Left Podcast” that “we are now in a different moment in time.”
“We can no longer ask our fans to look to the future to think about a Red Sox team that’s capable of winning the division and capable of making a deep postseason run,” he said. “I think, instead, we have to talk to decisive actions that we’re taking right now to put a better team on the field in 2025.”
That sounds well and good, but as Sam Kennedy reminded us, talk is cheap. Breslow here is talking about talking a big game when it comes to expectations for Boston’s 2025 offseason.
In the same interview, Breslow suggested again that the team would be open to trading some of their prospects. But as for his long-stated goal of improving the pitching (which would naturally start at the top by bringing in an ace or two), he left the door open to the possibility that the Sox might already have that ace in hand…
“We need guys that can start Game 1 of a playoff series, and whether or not Tanner (Houck) or (Brayan) Bello or Kutter (Crawford) can become those guys,” Breslow said. “We’ve seen it in spurts, whether (Richard) Fitts or (Quinn) Preister can take the next step. That remains to be seen. We’re going to do everything we can to ensure that happens.”
Ugh…
I can’t fairly criticize Breslow too much for something that he hasn’t done (wrong) yet, one way or the other, but again… “full throttle.”
‘Nuff said.
Tough sell
Breslow also admitted this week something obvious to most observers.
Trading away Chris Sale, only to have him turn around and put together one of the best seasons of his career, wasn’t the best look for the organization.
“It absolutely hurts that Chris Sale was not pitching the way that he had all season in a Red Sox uniform this year and it’s really easy to play the ‘what if’ game,” Breslow told 310 To Left.
Sale’s dominance — and the fact he wasn’t doing it in Boston — was a common talking point from Sox fans and media alike this season, especially so later in the season as the Sox rotation started showing cracks after an unexpectedly strong start.
It was all fair game, and I certainly can’t knock it. I’m not going to put on my fancy BBWAA top hat and monocle and suggest that you don’t know the game and Vaughn Grissom’s expected bWAR+-= (something I just made up, but who knows, it could be real…) was actually elite and he was in fact more impactful than Sale…
Nope. Sale dominated. Grissom got hurt and struggled. That was the definitive tale of the tape for the 2024 season.
“I think the framework, at the time, was sound,” Breslow said. “That was a decision that was made with the longer-term focus in mind as much as 2024.”
At the time, I — and many others — were indeed on board with the idea of trading a pitcher who hadn’t been able to reliable post for several years. In that sense, I still don’t think the idea to move on from Sale was necessarily wrong.
The one thing I will say, though, is that the possibility remains that the Red Sox could still wind up “winning” this trade in the long run. I was asked time and time again this season during our BSJ Live Q&A’s about Grissom and his viability long-term, and each time I would answer “the verdict is still out.”
Grissom could still become the everyday second baseman the team believed he could be. We can’t definitively say yet that it was a bad trade. But I fully admit that the early exit polling is in, and the results are very much not favorable.
We’ll have a concrete answer on Grissom within the next year or two. But for the moment, in the lens of 2024, the Braves are the projected winners…
Gethin Coolbaugh is a columnist for Boston Sports Journal. Follow him @GethinCoolbaugh on X/Twitter.