Red Sox Winter Weekend Recap

Winter Is Here To Stay

Jan 22, 2024

Before I get negative, I want to acknowledge the great work of the Red Sox, former players, and fans honored Tim Wakefield this weekend. I think it was a little odd for them to jump from ownership getting slammed with questions to the Wakefield tribute, but to each his own.

For those of you who are not sad Red Sox fans, you probably didn’t realize that the last few days were “Red Sox Winter Weekend.” A fan event held in Springfield, Mass before the team heads down to Fort Myer. If I had known I could go and boo the ownership by taking a quick three hour drive, I would have done it in a heartbeat.

That is how the weekend was kicked off as Craig Breslow and Sam Kennedy joined Jonathan Papelbon on stage to discuss the current off-season. Immediately, the crowd began to boo as they walked on stage. It wasn’t long until Sam Kennedy threw the Red Sox nation into a frenzy by announcing the team was looking to spend less than last year.

For reference, the team spent $225 million last year, putting them $8 million below the luxury tax. This season, the luxury tax will be up to $237 million. So, it remains to be seen how far below that number the Red Sox will end up. Red Sox Twitter immediately erupted as the ownership has been saying the opposite for the past few months.

Tom Werner, in particular, had to try to walk back his “full throttle” comments from earlier in the season. He was quoted as saying.

"Full throttle also applies to my own life. We are accountable to our fans, we're not happy, as Sam [Kennedy] said for our performance last year, and we expect to be better this year."

The problem with this is the other quote a few minutes after he initially said “full throttle” a few months ago.

“You need great players… It’s not about selling (the appeal of the team); it’s about having great players. And generally, you need players who have high WAR to be a winner. Raffy Devers is a star who will be with us a long time. But we need to complement him with other talent… when you look back, you need to have stars.”

And this quote from last Wednesday

"In the end, we don't have a line in terms of our payroll that we look at as much as trusting that Craig (Breslow) is going to deliver on his assurance that we're going to be competitive."

THIS IS CRAZY! Werner is claiming that he and Henry are in “lock step” about not selling the team. Personally, based on these comments, I don’t believe that. I think John Henry doesn’t give two craps about the Red Sox anymore. He won four championships and broke the curse. Now, he wants to focus on Liverpool and the Penguins. However, he is a businessman, and even if the Red Sox are losing, he is still making money.

Frankly, I also think Tom Werner is a fraud. He also stated

“We spend a lot of time trying to figure out ways to bring new fans into the park and have some tickets that are very affordable for students. We spend a lot of time talking about the experience of going to Fenway. We think our record is probably the most important thing, but there are other things that make going to Fenway a special place.”

That sea of blue is not Red Sox fans. So, Tom, are we catering to opposing fans now to fill the seats? That is what started happening last year, and it will sure as heck continue this year.

Now, I am not one of the crazy online people screaming “BOYCOTT” or “SELL YOUR SEASON TICKETS,” that is stupid.

I am simply just disgusted with the lack of accountability and ownership by John Henry. If they came out in November and said

“Yo, we stink right now, but we got some really good brunette studs coming up in a year or two that are gonna be the foundation of this team for a decade. So, we are gonna put together a roster, but wait to spend big money until these young guns are up and then build around them.”

I would have been happy. I love Roman Anthony, Marcelo Mayer, Kyle Teel, Nick Yorke, Mikey Romero, Miguel Bleis, Ceddanne Rafaela, etc., but that isn’t what they said. They went with the “full throttle” and “money won’t restrict us” quotes in November. Then, when it was time to chase Yamamoto and other top free agents, it was all silent on the western front.

This weekend, Kennedy was asked if and what the Red Sox offered Yamamoto. The answer? “Not enough.”

No shit Sam.

We could go on and on about this, but let us quickly jump into some cool stuff that came out of the weekend.

2004 Red Sox Team

I will calmly say that it is super disappointing that for the 20th anniversary of the ‘04 team, the Red Sox will not be putting their best foot forward. Okay, I am done.

Dave O’Brien ran a panel with David Ortiz, Jason Varitek, and Pedro Marines talking about the team. Regardless of how the team does, I will still find great joy in celebrating these guys for the next year.

Young Studs Galore

Saturday morning, they brought out Kyle Teel, Marcelo Mayer, Roman Anthony, and Nick Yorke to talk about what their off-season looks like. I would have thought they would go all in and bring Rafaela and Bleis out as well, but maybe they couldn't make it. This was clearly the team showing the fan base, “Hey, don’t worry, we are gonna be good!” and as excited as I am for these guys, they are still very young and unproven. However, there are some negative Nancys out there.

The fans on Twitter, not naming names, who are screaming to trade Mayer for Dylan Cease, are the same fans that screamed and cried for the team to sign Trevor Story…..

They are also the ones screaming and crying for the team to sign Jordan Montgomery or Blake Snell right now. Both are 31 years old…. If this team is in a re-build, just wait a year and go after Max Fried, Zach Wheeler, Shane Bieber, Walker Buehler, or Corbin Burnes.

Mayer-21

Anthony-19

Teel-21

Yorke-21

Triston Casas Content

I have become a Trison Casas STAN this offseason. Devers has been nowhere to be seen while Casas has been out working his tail off and slowly becoming the face and leader of this team. It's probably a hot take to say that, and don’t get me wrong, I love Devers, but Casas just seems to have that IT personality that Rafael lacks.

Building Pitching From Within

The team seems to be hellbent on developing their homegrown pitchers. New pitching coach Andrew Bailey is at the forefront of this movement and will consider himself a failure if the team does not improve this year. They were at the bottom of the barrel last year, so the only place they can go is up.

My personal preference is still to trade Jansen and make Whitlock and Houck the 8/9 guys. I think this is the last year they can get this done before it is too late.

The rest of the highlights seemed to be some fun fan interactions, which I would have loved to be at. I am already planning on going to next year’s event. Maybe with a press pass….

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