JWH and Bloom in Light of Mookie's Comments

[Shaky Walton]

If you believe Mookie Betts, the narrative that Mookie was itching to leave Boston and was never offered $300 mm was false and very likely something that the Sox put out there to mollify fans and justify the trade.

“Most people don’t believe it. But why would I lie about that? I did,” he said. “That was my team. Just because I didn’t take an offer didn’t mean I didn’t want to be there. There’s a business component to the game.

“We were looking for houses in Boston. We thought it was going to work out. I thought both sides were playing the slow game and it would eventually work out. We were negotiating, that’s what I thought.”
Betts said he never gave the Sox any ultimatum or a figure they had to meet.

“Normal negotiations, going back and forth,” he said. “Of course I’m going to stand my ground just like you should stand your ground. But I thought we’d keep talking.”

Betts was adamant that the Red Sox never offered him a deal worth $300 million over 10 years.

“That never happened,” he said. “I know that’s out there and people say what they’ve got to say. But no, they didn’t do that. They didn’t.”

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/08/24/sports/mookie-betts-red-sox-trade/?event=event25

Until Betts made these comments, my view of the Betts' trade was negative but also nuanced. While there are no black and white rules, and there are always a multitude of factors that must be considered when evaluating any trade, my general rule of thumb is that the team that ends up with the best player, especially if that player is a generational talent, wins the trade. So I looked at this trade as a mistake, but comforted myself with the fact that they at least came up with Verdugo and Wong, and I bought that Mookie's heart was not in Boston and that his personality was not suited for the intensity of Boston. Not that he could not thrive in Boston. But that ultimately, he preferred to be elsewhere, and that the Sox were faced with a Hobson's Choice. And as painful as it was to trade Betts, it was a lot better than seeing him walk with no return, and the odds of him walking unless they overpaid him, perhaps by a wide margin, made the bitter pill one that it was at least defensible to swallow.

So when I read Mookie's comments, I'm left with two options. One is to believe him. The other is to think that he's masterfully playing the media and the fans, and having it both ways. He gets to be good with the Boston fans, and totally slam Henry and Bloom, and at the same time, be in LA and away from the Boston "heat."

I choose to believe him. I cannot know what was in his heart at the time. But I think he is telling the truth.

I say that because of my sense of him (from afar, for sure) and because I am not immune from the larger context. That is, that Henry brought in someone to run baseball operations whose mode of being was the antithesis of Dave Dombrowski's heavy spending approach, and who came out of an organization that somehow was able to win without spending like a big market team. And I have seen that Henry has been, in stark contrast to his prior years in ownership, almost shockingly out of the spotlight and not accountable in any sense to his fan base. Whether that's out of lack of interest in the Red Sox, in light of his soccer team and other interests or a genuinely held belief that the Dombowski approach is not sustainable over time, I will leave to others. But it's clear that JWH's approach is in line with not paying up, or even market value, for Mookie. Henry might have looked at the Yankees' deal with Ellsbury, for example, and felt like he had dodged a bullet. I can't find it now, but I distinctly recall Tom Werner predicting that the Mookie deal will look very differently over the latter half of its duration, and indeed that may prove true.

So I do believe Mookie, and in turn, my view of Henry and Bloom, has totally soured. Make no mistake, I have not been a Bloom fan for a while. I know he has made many strong moves. But I have an overall very negative evaluation of him, and have been truly surprised at the extent to which many on this site seem to support him. That discussion is not for now. I am only mentioning it because I am admitting my biases. When I say that I believe Mookie, and the fact that I do has changed my view of Henry and Bloom, it's important to be intellectually honest and admit that I was already very disappointed with their overall approach.

But now, it's different. Now, I can't defend that trade. Now, I view it as the single worst decision a Boston team has made in my lifetime. Now, I view it in the same general category of mouth vomit as bringing Pedro back for the 8th (not that I want to discuss that now, and not that I don't understand that others defend that move; and I know that an in game decision is different in kind than a personnel decision).

So I have some questions.

Do you also believe Mookie?

If not, why not?

If so, does it also change your view of Henry and Bloom? Do you also now view them much more negatively than you did before? Or does it turn your view more dramatically?

And what of the trade? Is your view of it impacted by Betts' comments?

While I admitted my negative view of Bloom overall, because I thought I needed to do so for the reason stated above, I don't intend for this thread to become a referendum on him. I intend it to be more about if and how your views have changed based on Mookie's comments.

If this conversation has been developed elsewhere, perhaps this thread is unnecessary and should be deleted. Hopefully, that is not the case.

 

[Smiling Joe Hesketh]

JWH hasn't made a public comment in many years. I doubt he'll end his self-imposed silence on this issue, particularly since it might make him look bad.

For what it's worth it seems that the team is publicly run my Bloom and Sam Kennedy. Ownership hasn't really been around.

 

[Kliq]

I don't see any reason for Mookie to be lying, and as the quotes show he isn't being ambiguous about the offer, he is flat out saying "They didn't offer me that contract." If he were to be just saying something to appease the Boston fans, I don't think he would be so adamant that the offer was never made, he could be way more political and vague than saying what he said in that Globe article.

 

[CreightonGubanich]

I believe Mookie, and if he's right, it supports what I've always thought about the Mookie trade: they just didn't want to pay him on a market-value contract. Everything else - the luxury tax threshold, saving money for Bogaerts/Devers, Mookie not liking Boston - was all misdirection.

 

[sezwho]

JWH hasn't made a public comment in many years. I doubt he'll end his self-imposed silence on this issue, particularly since it might make him look bad.

For what it's worth it seems that the team is publicly run my Bloom and Sam Kennedy. Ownership hasn't really been around.

Ownership, if by ownership we mean specifically JWH, has stopped speaking because it’s stupid for him to do so. His every utterance is mocked to a ridiculous degree and is deliberately misconstrued by the (talk radio) media.

He’s a bond ghoul (I too worked a bond desk so make the reference with some deference) and has correctly determined there’s no profit in his appearance.

I suspect that once the Sox are back to competition for top of AL East he’ll benefit from the rising tide of success and leave the mega yacht.

 

[zak1013]

I do believe Mookie and I thought Chad Finn’s recent piece in the Globe on this was excellent. I’ve always felt the way that he so succinctly puts it - if the Sox couldn’t find a way to keep Mookie, what are we even doing here? What is a team like the Red Sox working towards if not to be able to invest whatever it takes to keep a generational, homegrown, beloved talent like Mookie?

This trade continues to leave an extraordinarily bitter taste in my mouth and I’m not sure what it will take for me to get back to feeling the devotion to the Sox that I did pre-trade.

 

[Smiling Joe Hesketh]

The thing that makes the least sense is that their publicly declared reasons for not offering Mookie a fair-market contract (the unwillingness to exceed the luxury tax threshold) might make more sense had they not just lavished stupid money on extensions for Sale and Eovaldi just a year or two beforehand. To give two oft-injured and older pitchers large extensions and THEN retreat to the fainting couch with an attack of the financial vapours when it came time for Mookie's new deal is incredibly contradictory, and for the life of me I can't figure out why that was.

Either ownership approved DD giving out those extensions, which everyone knew would be impacting the threshold limit with Mookie coming due, or DD made those deals himself without ownership approval. One makes ownership look unprepared and incompetant, the other makes it look disinterested and out of touch. Neither is a good look.

To their credit they did extend Devers, and Bloom may have been shown to be right with not offering X an extension. At the same time the Story contract is a failure at this moment in time and the Sale extension hasn't been successful either, but both of those deals are in the 140-160 million range. Maybe they're more comfortable having a bad 140 million contract than a good 300 million one, I dunno.

I despise the fact that Mookie is no longer a Red Sock, but I might have a modicum of respect for the team about it if they said "We didn't think he'd age well or be worth the money, and clearly we were wrong about that." Another compounding issue is that while Verduo and Wong are decent major league players, they aren't even at All-Star caliber, while Mookie continues to put up year after year of MVP value and is well on his way to the Hall of Fame. That's an incredibly bitter pill to swallow.

The Mookie discussion will never go away until the Red Sox win something without him. We all know the Babe Ruth discussion never did.

 

[Salem's Lot]

I do believe Mookie and I thought Chad Finn’s recent piece in the Globe on this was excellent. I’ve always felt the way that he so succinctly puts it - if the Sox couldn’t find a way to keep Mookie, what are we even doing here? What is a team like the Red Sox working towards if not to be able to invest whatever it takes to keep a generational, homegrown, beloved talent like Mookie?

This trade continues to leave an extraordinarily bitter taste in my mouth and I’m not sure what it will take for me to get back to feeling the devotion to the Sox that I did pre-trade.

They are business people that made a decision at that time that $300 million for a single player was too risky of an investment. If you look around the league, there are a lot of examples of those contracts being bad investments.

This one happened to be a bad decision on ownership’s part, and you can look at the Devers extension as an acknowledgment that they now realize the mistake.

 

[Mike Thomas 802]

There is one important thing in "is Mookie telling the truth" that needs to be included- the entire world changed a month or two after the trade. COVID changed the dynamic of what a risk in waiting out free agency was for Mookie. He said over and over that he wanted to test the market. That he didn't want to sell himself short. Baseball execs were predicting $400 million contracts. COVID changed that, but it was how things were playing out. We need to remember that. Accepting the deal LA offered was a reaction to the uncertainty that may ahead when the entire world stopped.

 

[Smiling Joe Hesketh]

They are business people that made a decision at that time that $300 million for a single player was too risky of an investment. If you look around the league, there are a lot of examples of those contracts being bad investments.

This one happened to be a bad decision on ownership’s part, and you can look at the Devers extension as an acknowledgment that they now realize the mistake.

This is the fairest take I've read on this issue so far.

It hurts that compounding the issue is that the player return for Mookie in the trade is not only not at his level of talent (which should be expected, that's fine), but that neither Verdugo or Wong are players one can really build a team upon. Verdugo is a 111 OPS+ player with 12 HRs and terrible baserunning. Meh. Mookie is at 171 and 34 HRs and is one of the best and smartest players in the league. It's hard as a fan to see that.

 

[zak1013]

This is the fairest take I've read on this issue so far.

It hurts that compounding the issue is that the player return for Mookie in the trade is not only not at his level of talent (which should be expected, that's fine), but that neither Verdugo or Wong are players one can really build a team upon. Verdugo is a 111 OPS+ player with 12 HRs and terrible baserunning. Meh. Mookie is at 171 and 34 HRs and is one of the best and smartest players in the league. It's hard as a fan to see that.

This is a great point. If we had ended up with two young prospects who were now hitting their prime and seemed like future cornerstones of the franchise, then maybe it’s an easier pill to swallow. But the fact is that we didn’t, and so in some sense you’d like to think that management should have been balancing the risk that we end up with a pretty lousy return for trading Betts vs. the risk that a big contract for Betts ends up as an albatross. Maybe their risk-reward calculus was just mistaken here and it was just a bad decision at the end of the day - that’s certainly a reasonable argument. But to couch this as a purely business decision is I think a bit limited - yes this is a business but a good ownership group has to understand that there is value beyond the field of keeping a guy like Mookie on the team for his entire (or at least the bulk) of his career.

 

[Max Power]

The thing that makes the least sense is that their publicly declared reasons for not offering Mookie a fair-market contract (the unwillingness to exceed the luxury tax threshold) might make more sense had they not just lavished stupid money on extensions for Sale and Eovaldi just a year or two beforehand. To give two oft-injured and older pitchers large extensions and THEN retreat to the fainting couch with an attack of the financial vapours when it came time for Mookie's new deal is incredibly contradictory, and for the life of me I can't figure out why that was.

Either ownership approved DD giving out those extensions, which everyone knew would be impacting the threshold limit with Mookie coming due, or DD made those deals himself without ownership approval. One makes ownership look unprepared and incompetant, the other makes it look disinterested and out of touch. Neither is a good look.

Dombrowski was fired in the middle of a game less than a year after signing those deals. I think the reality is that he talked ownership into them and he got canned when it was obvious they were a bad idea. In fairness, the Eovaldi one was okay. Money wasn't big and he was healthy a little more than expected for a guy with his history.

To their credit they did extend Devers, and Bloom may have been shown to be right with not offering X an extension. At the same time the Story contract is a failure at this moment in time and the Sale extension hasn't been successful either, but both of those deals are in the 140-160 million range. Maybe they're more comfortable having a bad 140 million contract than a good 300 million one, I dunno.

The Mookie contract might still wind up on the bad side of the ledger. We're only in year 4 of 13. As with all of these mega-length ones, there's a whole lot of time for a guy to turn into Miguel Cabrera.

 

[Smiling Joe Hesketh]

The Mookie contract might still wind up on the bad side of the ledger. We're only in year 4 of 13. As with all of these mega-length ones, there's a whole lot of time for a guy to turn into Miguel Cabrera.

Honest question for you: do you think the Tigers actually regret giving Cabrera an extension?

Looks like Cabrera's last good season was at age 35.

So far Mookie has provided 21.4 WAR for LA in a little less than 4 years. I think the expectation with these mega-deals is that the player will perform extremely well at the beginning of them and thus that makes up for the lesser years at the end.

 

[moondog80]

I don't think anyone, least of all Chain Bloom and/or John Henry, ever thought Wong or Verdugo would ever measure up to Mookie Betts. But that's not the proper way to look at it. They had already decided, for better or for worse, that an extension was not going to happen. Once you got to that point, they traded one year of Mookie Betts for:

5 pre-FA years of Alex Verdguo
6-pre FA years of Connor Wong
Jeter Downs -- a very good prospect that didn't work out, which happens all the time but he was valuable at the time.
48 million dollars (spread over 3 years) of freed up payroll by virtue of the Dodgers taking on half of David Price's deal
30 million dollars of freed up payroll, every year form the point the deal was made until 2032 (minus what they are paying Verdugo and Wong, which this year is about 7 mil)

That's a nice return.

And yes, I know that there's no hard salary cap and they could have paid Mookie and sill spent all that money if they really wanted to. But with few exceptions, that's simply not how teams operate. And the three teams that acted like budgets don't matter the most this past offseason are currently 62-68, 60-71, and 61-70.

 

[Max Power]

Honest question for you: do you think the Tigers actually regret giving Cabrera an extension?

Looks like Cabrera's last good season was at age 35.

So far Mookie has provided 21.4 WAR for LA in a little less than 4 years.

Maybe? If the choice was between him and Scherzer/Verlander, they clearly backed the wrong horse. But watching him chase milestones has been the only thing worthwhile for the team the last few years.

 

[Smiling Joe Hesketh]

And yes, I know that there's no hard salary cap and they could have paid Mookie and sill spent all that money if they really wanted to. But with few exceptions, that's simply not how teams operate. And the three teams that acted like budgets don't matter the most this past offseason are currently 62-68, 60-71, and 61-70.

It's probably fair to note that the Dodgers are 80-49 and that their two huge signings/deals (Betts and Freeman) are working out splendidly.

Teams can spend a lot of money on middling talent and have mediocre years. Signing elite talent seems to have been a sound plan for much (not all) of the time.

 

[jezza1918]

Isnt part of the calculus not just about Mookie, but about the state of the team/entire system? The 2019 team was not very successful + not much talent in the pipeline...so couldnt the FO have been saying to themselves "Mookie will be great and worth 30+ mil a year for the next few seasons, but we dont think our team looks like it will be a constant threat to win those years...and once we are a constant threat Mookie will not be worth the 30+ mil a year."

 

[DennyDoyle'sBoil]

I think all you can ask of a front office is that it makes the best decisions it can for the best interest of the club’s performance on the field. There is a difference between errors of judgment and being cheap out of self interest because you take your fans for granted. Does anyone really believe the latter? If you do, you have every right to be pissed.

If the club made a decision that a Mookie contract would be a net negative because of a perception of his future value, that is mistake in judgment. It’s basically a scouting error. Or a failure to predict the market.

To me, this was a judgment error. It happens. It is not a breach of trust or any of the other things angry fans want to say about it.

Certainly fair game to be concerned that this team makes a fair number of these errors that have stung and led to some low finishes. From Panda to Sale to Moncada to Mookie, etc. But I have never believed they are not trying to win, and some championships along the way — where the mistakes like Price and Sale contributed — makes it easier to swallow.

Moreover, each new alleged revelation isn’t going to change anyone’s mind, especially not after a weekend where he torched us. One of the best parts about getting good again, will be that it allows us to move on.

 

[moondog80]

It's probably fair to note that the Dodgers are 80-49 and that their two huge signings/deals (Betts and Freeman) are working out splendidly.

Yep. And it's worked out for the Rangers too, for this year anyway.

But that gets to the question of whether or not an extension was a good idea or not. My point (which I muddied by tacking that last point on) is that putting that issue aside, the return for one year of Betts was at least a solid B.

 

[zenax]

What's next? Devers and Yoshida and cash out the door to whichever team is willing to pony up some inexpensive 'talent' for them?

 

[jezza1918]

It's probably fair to note that the Dodgers are 80-49 and that their two huge signings/deals (Betts and Freeman) are working out splendidly.

Teams can spend a lot of money on middling talent and have mediocre years. Signing elite talent seems to have been a sound plan for much (not all) of the time.

But they've also let some 30+ million dollars go over the years. If our system had Walker Buehler and Urias in the pipeline in 2019, and we hadnt extended Sale...do we still think the Sox totally punt on Betts?

 

[Smiling Joe Hesketh]

But they've also let some 30+ million dollars go over the years. If our system had Walker Buehler and Urias in the pipeline in 2019, and we hadnt extended Sale...do we still think the Sox totally punt on Betts?

That's the $300 million question, isn't it? We don't know. They may very well have done so. They kept Devers and punted on X (and both of those decisions in the post-Betts world seem to be working out for now). I guess it depends on how cynically you view ownership. People here are all over the spectrum on that.

 

[Sam Ray Not]

I know MLB ≠ NBA, Betts signed his 12/$365M extension three years ago, and there are plenty of other nuances, but in light of Jaylen Brown's 5/$306M extension, having balked at 10/$300M for Mookie feels more galling than ever. And while one player carries much more weight in the NBA than MLB, Mookie was closer to Tatum (or Bird) than Brown in terms of rarity and irreplaceability. Sigh. (Edit: X being closer to JB in this analogy).

 

[jezza1918]

That's the $300 million question, isn't it? We don't know. They may very well have done so. They kept Devers and punted on X (and both of those decisions in the post-Betts world seem to be working out for now).

Yup. I just think when the conversation centers on the Mookie trade only, a lot of the context gets lost. There were a lot of factors that were at play when they decided to trade Mookie, not just "we dont want to pay him." (not saying that's what you are claiming, fwiw...but there is plenty of that type of thinking out there in the red sox ether)

 

[Shaky Walton]

I do believe Mookie and I thought Chad Finn’s recent piece in the Globe on this was excellent. I’ve always felt the way that he so succinctly puts it - if the Sox couldn’t find a way to keep Mookie, what are we even doing here? What is a team like the Red Sox working towards if not to be able to invest whatever it takes to keep a generational, homegrown, beloved talent like Mookie?

This trade continues to leave an extraordinarily bitter taste in my mouth and I’m not sure what it will take for me to get back to feeling the devotion to the Sox that I did pre-trade.

Your comment brings up something I was thinking about before I posted. For me, this trade has dumped so much gasoline on Herny and Bloom that I don't think I will turn back toward them unless and until the team is a WS contender. Not winner. I'm not a Yankees fan or a member of the Steinbrenner family! But I do think it will be hard for me to embrace them while the Sox are not a team that at least has a legitimate chance to win another title.

 

[Smiling Joe Hesketh]

Yup. I just think when the conversation centers on the Mookie trade only, a lot of the context gets lost. There were a lot of factors that were at play when they decided to trade Mookie, not just "we dont want to pay him." (not saying that's what you are claiming, fwiw...but there is plenty of that type of thinking out there in the red sox ether)

I agree.

This remains an emotional issue for me as a fan and I suspect for many others. Had they found a way to work out a contract extension, we would have been able to enjoy Mookie as both the franchise superstar and as the face of the team, in much the same way Brady was for the Pats or Bergeron was for the Bruins. To have that hope come to nothing in the long run remains a difficult thing to ultimately accept. All other considerations aside, I wanted to see Mookie play baseball for the Red Sox forever.

Natually this complicates the discussion.

 

[trekfan55]

We seem to revisit this topic every now and then. At the end of the day the Sox did not want to pay Betts the amount of money that he would have gotten in the open market and traded him for a big return.

I think it was the wrong decision and so does almost everyone here. Keep in mind, I think the Sox should have paid Mookie what the pre 2020 Pandemic market showed. That hhad he not been traded maybe he signs an extension for a level below that make sit even worse. The Sox are a bog market team and they should habe give Mookie hismoney. That being said, the Sox are a privately run organization and if JWH did not want to pay that money they hoped to at least mitigate the situation and get a nice return.

BTW they made a very good offer to Xander, San Diego made a better one (and no one here thonks the Sox should have matched it). And they paid Devers (maybe because of fan poressure?)

 

[jezza1918]

Your comment brings up something I was thinking about before I posted. For me, this trade has dumped so much gasoline on Herny and Bloom that I don't think I will turn back toward them unless and until the team is a WS contender. Not winner. I'm not a Yankees fan or a member of the Steinbrenner family! But I do think it will be hard for me to embrace them while the Sox are not a team that at least has a legitimate chance to win another title.

there's no way to ask this without sounding snarky Im realizing, but I promise it isnt intended to be - but did you follow the team in 2021?

 

[MiracleOfO2704]

Certainly fair game to be concerned that this team makes a fair number of these errors that have stung and led to some low finishes. From Panda to Sale to Moncada to Mookie, etc.

Sorry, what was the error with Moncada? He had a continental breakfast with the Red Sox before he was packaged with Kopech to the White Sox for Sale, and pre-extension Sale was probably more valuable to the Red Sox than post-trade Moncada has been for the White Sox.

 

[Fishy1]

I actually am pretty ambivalent about the Rafael Devers deal. He's one of the worst defensive third baseman in baseball and is giving us a wrc+ of 127, which is good, but not worth 30 million a year when he's getting eaten up by routine groundballs. He's on track for 3-3.5 war (Mookie is already at 7). Devers in danger of needing to be moved off third base to first or even DH. They gave the deal to Devers at a younger age, but not that much younger than Mookie.

Giving Devers the 300 million seems like a classic case of FOMO: they regret not giving the money to Mookie, so they're committing it to the next good guy to come along... but Devers isn't Mookie. Mookie was the guy to give 300 million to. If you wanted to lock a guy in, it was Mookie. You only get a couple of those contracts, probably, so you should be giving it to the transcendent player, not the guy who is merely good. I don't hate the Mookie deal in theory, but he was the guy to pay.

I get why they didn't, but turning around and giving a guy who can barely field his position 300 million dollars just to show you're committed seems like a silly decision to me. And I know JWH isn't speaking, but giving Devers 300 million doesn't seem like a Bloom move to me.

Not giving that money to X, on the other hand, seemed like a no-brainer. Declining numbers year over year heading into his 30's... yeah, no thanks.

 

[Max Power]

Isnt part of the calculus not just about Mookie, but about the state of the team/entire system? The 2019 team was not very successful + not much talent in the pipeline...so couldnt the FO have been saying to themselves "Mookie will be great and worth 30+ mil a year for the next few seasons, but we dont think our team looks like it will be a constant threat to win those years...and once we are a constant threat Mookie will not be worth the 30+ mil a year."

The Red Sox were banned from signing international free agents for a year in 2017, then lost some of their IFA pool money by going over the cap the next couple of years. The directive from ownership must have been to get under the cap and get rid of the penalties to restock the system. At that time the next free agent coming up was Mookie, so he was the one who was moved. If they had managed to extend him prior, I'm guessing they would have tried to move Xander and JD to get under the tax limit that offseason. The 2020 team was going to be shitty no matter what.

 

[John Marzano Olympic Hero]

Your comment brings up something I was thinking about before I posted. For me, this trade has dumped so much gasoline on Herny and Bloom that I don't think I will turn back toward them unless and until the team is a WS contender. Not winner. I'm not a Yankees fan or a member of the Steinbrenner family! But I do think it will be hard for me to embrace them while the Sox are not a team that at least has a legitimate chance to win another title.

I think that what the Betts trade did was make fans uneasy with how the Red Sox look at players. If you're not going to pay the money to sign a once-in-a-generation superstar in the prime of his career and then trade him, what about the next wave of great players that the Sox will inevitably bring up from their minor league system? Like is Mayer going to play really well, out perform his rookie contract and then be traded when he wants the money he deserves? That's a problem for, at bare minimum, eight years from now but like @zak1013 said, if they didn't do it for Mookie why would they do it for Mayer, etc*?

* I think that if he was completely honest, Bloom would admit that his hand was forced by the fan base in the Devers deal. In fact, I think that Bloom would rather have signed Bogaerts and moved him to third once Mayer is ready for MLB action. Even though it doesn't appear to be the case right now, I have a feeling that Bogaerts is going to age better than Devers, who isn't great defensively presently.

 

[Shaky Walton]

there's no way to ask this without sounding snarky Im realizing, but I promise it isnt intended to be - but did you follow the team in 2021?

I have followed the team since I971.

In 2021, I believed that Mookie was extremely predisposed to leaving and the Sox turned lemons into lemonade. I was still angry that they didn't sign him, but I was more favorably inclined because of my perception of Mookie's mindset. I bought the spin.

That they were a contender in 2021 doesn't affect my present, very disappointed mindset.

Still, I get your point. And you also understand that 2021 can be viewed as an outlier, given that it falls between several last place or near last place finishes.

 

[Strike4]

I think all you can ask of a front office is that it makes the best decisions it can for the best interest of the club’s performance on the field. There is a difference between errors of judgment and being cheap out of self interest because you take your fans for granted. Does anyone really believe the latter? If you do, you have every right to be pissed.

If the club made a decision that a Mookie contract would be a net negative because of a perception of his future value, that is mistake in judgment. It’s basically a scouting error. Or a failure to predict the market.

To me, this was a judgment error. It happens. It is not a breach of trust or any of the other things angry fans want to say about it.

Certainly fair game to be concerned that this team makes a fair number of these errors that have stung and led to some low finishes. From Panda to Sale to Moncada to Mookie, etc. But I have never believed they are not trying to win, and some championships along the way — where the mistakes like Price and Sale contributed — makes it easier to swallow.

Moreover, each new alleged revelation isn’t going to change anyone’s mind, especially not after a weekend where he torched us. One of the best parts about getting good again, will be that it allows us to move on.

This is all spot on. We get into all the theories about who said what because we are passionate fans. Nobody does this when talking about failed business deals for companies.

I am also hopeful that we've moved beyond the era when everybody starts imparting evil motives to the parties because it's human nature to craft such narratives. Like, Mookie could very well be wrong about getting that offer. Maybe his agent received some conditional/contingent offer for $300 million but it had some other deal-killing element and Mookie is confusing the details because he's a baseball player, not an agent. That's totally fine - Mookie isn't trying to do some evil shit and get back at the front office because he's the MLB Iago since he was wronged by the Sox FO. He's just talking to the media.

 

[Smiling Joe Hesketh]

The Red Sox were banned from signing international free agents for a year in 2017, then lost some of their IFA pool money by going over the cap the next couple of years. The directive from ownership must have been to get under the cap and get rid of the penalties to restock the system. At that time the next free agent coming up was Mookie, so he was the one who was moved. If they had managed to extend him prior, I'm guessing they would have tried to move Xander and JD to get under the tax limit that offseason. The 2020 team was going to be shitty no matter what.

This again goes back to the inexplicable Sale and Eovaldi extensions, particularly because both IIRC were under contract through the end of the 2019 season. If you know you are facing cap issues, why on earth do you commit $220 million to two guys who were on the wrong side of 30 and had durability issues?

I won't belabor the point further but this is a large reason why the Mookie issue will never make much sense. They seemingly chose to spend money on exactly the wrong thing at a time when a far better player was due for a new deal.

 

[zak1013]

I think that what the Betts trade did was make fans uneasy with how the Red Sox look at players. If you're not going to pay the money to sign a once-in-a-generation superstar in the prime of his career and then trade him, what about the next wave of great players that the Sox will inevitably bring up from their minor league system? Like is Mayer going to play really well, out perform his rookie contract and then be traded when he wants the money he deserves? That's a problem for, at bare minimum, eight years from now but like @zak1013 said, if they didn't do it for Mookie why would they do it for Mayer, etc*?

* I think that if he was completely honest, Bloom would admit that his hand was forced by the fan base in the Devers deal. In fact, I think that Bloom would rather have signed Bogaerts and moved him to third once Mayer is ready for MLB action. Even though it doesn't appear to be the case right now, I have a feeling that Bogaerts is going to age better than Devers, who isn't great defensively presently.

Yes. Well said.

 

[jezza1918]

I have followed the team since I971.

In 2021, I believed that Mookie was extremely predisposed to leaving and the Sox turned lemons into lemonade. I was still angry that they didn't sign him, but I was more favorably inclined because of my perception of Mookie's mindset. I bought the spin.

That they were a contender in 2021 doesn't affect my present, very disappointed mindset.

Still, I get your point. And you also understand that 2021 can be viewed as an outlier, given that it falls between several last place or near last place finishes.

I definitely think 2021 was an outlier…and part of the reason I understand why the trade was made. While mookie may have been enough to put them over the top in 2021, he would not have been enough to make them contenders any of the other years…and while the emotional part of me wanted to continue to root for mookie, I totally see the flip side of the argument that the org is better suited to be that legit contender you want post mookie. That doesn’t mean I’m right, or the FO was right to trade him, but I do think it wasn’t some merit-less “we are too cheap to pay him” type decision they made.

 

[jezza1918]

This again goes back to the inexplicable Sale and Eovaldi extensions, particularly because both IIRC were under contract through the end of the 2019 season. If you know you are facing cap issues, why on earth do you commit $220 million to two guys who were on the wrong side of 30 and had durability issues?

I won't belabor the point further but this is a large reason why the Mookie issue will never make much sense. They seemingly chose to spend money on exactly the wrong thing at a time when a far better player was due for a new deal.

+1!

 

[Kliq]

I agree.

This remains an emotional issue for me as a fan and I suspect for many others. Had they found a way to work out a contract extension, we would have been able to enjoy Mookie as both the franchise superstar and as the face of the team, in much the same way Brady was for the Pats or Bergeron was for the Bruins. To have that hope come to nothing in the long run remains a difficult thing to ultimately accept. All other considerations aside, I wanted to see Mookie play baseball for the Red Sox forever.

Natually this complicates the discussion.

An element that frustrates me is that the Red Sox have become something different. Fenway is absurdly expensive, ticket prices have been raised since the Mookie trade, parking has gone up, Henry and Co. are gobbling up real estate around the ballpark. You walk into Fenway and every step you take you are either being charged for something, or someone is trying to get you to spend money on something else. You walk through the gate and immediately someone is trying to take a photo of you to document your "Fenway Park experience" and all of that. Fenway has become Boston's biggest tourist trap with the sole purpose of trying to extract as much money from you as possible.

And I could live with all of that if the Red Sox were spending big. The unwillingness to spend big on the most talented home-grown player since Yaz, followed with raising ticket prices, a few disappointing seasons, the trading of Benintendi and not signing Bogaerts (in hindsight fair moves, but at the time it was another strike) and a collection of unrecognizable platoon players and openers was really hard for me as a fan. The second most expensive stadium experience in baseball and the 10th highest payroll? That's a tough ask.

 

[Max Power]

This again goes back to the inexplicable Sale and Eovaldi extensions, particularly because both IIRC were under contract through the end of the 2019 season. If you know you are facing cap issues, why on earth do you commit $220 million to two guys who were on the wrong side of 30 and had durability issues?

Sure, and the guy who was in charge of baseball operations when that happened got fired.

 

[Mugsy's Jock]

I’ve long been of the belief Mookie really didn’t want to resign with the Sox and the trade was making the best of a bad situation.

I’ve now come to believe that was mistaken. Possibly fed to me by the Boston Globe, which obviously had a vested interest in the situation.

That said, I distinguish between ownership and Bloom here. I feel (based on who knows what) that ownership made the decision not to make a big investment in Mookie, and those marching orders were made clear to Chaim during the interview process.

 

[Jack Rabbit Slim]

This again goes back to the inexplicable Sale and Eovaldi extensions, particularly because both IIRC were under contract through the end of the 2019 season. If you know you are facing cap issues, why on earth do you commit $220 million to two guys who were on the wrong side of 30 and had durability issues?

I won't belabor the point further but this is a large reason why the Mookie issue will never make much sense. They seemingly chose to spend money on exactly the wrong thing at a time when a far better player was due for a new deal.

This is incorrect in regards to Eovaldi - he was a free agent after 2018 and was re-signed prior to 2019. I am with you on Sale and the rest of the post, but those 2 deals are also the reason Dombrowski was fired less than a year after winning the WS. He seemingly put his job on the line to convince the owners to approve these deals and it backfired big time. I am not sure how that is an indictment of the owners or current FO.

 

[Smiling Joe Hesketh]

Sure, and the guy who was in charge of baseball operations when that happened got fired.

Presumably ownership signed off on those deals when they were made. To then fire and blame the guy who made them and subsequently claim financial concerns isn't a great look for the ownership group, in my opinion. Did they not understand the impact those deals would have on the threshold?

 

[Shaky Walton]

An element that frustrates me is that the Red Sox have become something different. Fenway is absurdly expensive, ticket prices have been raised since the Mookie trade, parking has gone up, Henry and Co. are gobbling up real estate around the ballpark. You walk into Fenway and every step you take you are either being charged for something, or someone is trying to get you to spend money on something else. You walk through the gate and immediately someone is trying to take a photo of you to document your "Fenway Park experience" and all of that. Fenway has become Boston's biggest tourist trap with the sole purpose of trying to extract as much money from you as possible.

And I could live with all of that if the Red Sox were spending big. The unwillingness to spend big on the most talented home-grown player since Yaz, followed with raising ticket prices, a few disappointing seasons, the trading of Benintendi and not signing Bogaerts (in hindsight fair moves, but at the time it was another strike) and a collection of unrecognizable platoon players and openers was really hard for me as a fan. The second most expensive stadium experience in baseball and the 10th highest payroll? That's a tough ask.

This very well expresses my view.

As to the Betts trade, I am not one to argue against analyzing the details and context of every transaction. What was going on, could they contend with Betts, would he have signed, all of it.

But I also think this is one situation where losing the forest for the trees is very possible and is happening for some.

I'm gonna say it. You just don't trade a player like Mookie Betts without trying really freaking hard to keep him. I don't think even the Sox Spin Machine is making the claim that they tried really freaking hard to keep him. They put out that he wanted out and I think they made a judgment that his contract would not prove worth it.

In my view, that was a very big mistake, and whether it's down to bad judgment or something else, it's not one that I can easily forgiven. Especially in light of some of their other decisions and what @Kliq wrote.

He's just too good not to try really freaking hard to keep. Yes, hindsight has supported that. But at the time the deal was made, how many Sox well informed fans and media members would not have been in favor of going very far financially to keep that player?

 

[Red(s)HawksFan]

The second most expensive stadium experience in baseball and the 10th highest payroll? That's a tough ask.

Kinda apples and oranges here. Second most expensive stadium experience but also the 3rd smallest capacity in the league. Selling out 81 games at Fenway is not the same as selling out 81 games at Dodger Stadium. If the price to attend games were equivalent across the league, the Sox would be behind a lot of other clubs.

That's not to argue that the Sox are poor in any way, they're not. But you can't just point to the ticket prices and the payroll and come to a black and white conclusion that they're "not spending enough."

 

[Jack Rabbit Slim]

Presumably ownership signed off on those deals when they were made. To then fire and blame the guy who made them and subsequently claim financial concerns isn't a great look for the ownership group, in my opinion. Did they not understand the impact those deals would have on the threshold?

Why to the bolded? Dombrowski was hired to be the expert on evaluating baseball players, something owners are not (despite what some of them may think). In fact, it is pretty common for owners to be mocked for being too meddlesome in the FO's affairs. Of course then the CBO would be blamed when two large signings of his flop, especially if he really had to talk the owners into approving the signings (speculation on my part but it sure seems to be the reason DD was fired so quickly).

Imagine it more like a non-baseball business, say chemical engineering, to remove the feeling a layman might have that they would know better than an expert. The chief chemical engineer comes to the board and says I have this great new idea but I need $300 million for startup and I promise it will be very successful. The board feels uneasy with such a risky investment but while they have some knowledge in the field, they also hired this expert for a reason. If that expert's advice is then proven to be very wrong with significant future consequences, why wouldn't he be blamed and fired?

 

[Kliq]

Kinda apples and oranges here. Second most expensive stadium experience but also the 3rd smallest capacity in the league. Selling out 81 games at Fenway is not the same as selling out 81 games at Dodger Stadium. If the price to attend games were equivalent across the league, the Sox would be behind a lot of other clubs.

That's not to argue that the Sox are poor in any way, they're not. But you can't just point to the ticket prices and the payroll and come to a black and white conclusion that they're "not spending enough."

I don't really understand your point? Sure, the average ticket price is inflated in part because capacity is more limited at Fenway than at other venues, but you really think the price to attend Fenway would be drastically different if they had 4,000 more seats? What about the Henry ownership would make you think that is the case?

And my point was not just about cost directly, it's the whole aspect of Fenway being marketed as a jewel of America, which creates a tourist-friendly atmosphere which is great for Henry and ownership, because tourists will come to the ballpark regardless on how interesting the team on the field is. You go to Fenway and it doesn't seem like it is aimed anymore at your typical Red Sox fan--that combined with the team balking at Mookie and also making moves that in my opinion, have hurt local fan connections with the team, are what bothers me.

 

[Midnight Ryder Jones]

Kinda apples and oranges here. Second most expensive stadium experience but also the 3rd smallest capacity in the league. Selling out 81 games at Fenway is not the same as selling out 81 games at Dodger Stadium. If the price to attend games were equivalent across the league, the Sox would be behind a lot of other clubs.

Eh, not really, no. First, while it's true that the Sox have only the 28th-biggest ballpark, the difference between the 28th and 10th biggest is only 5,000 seats. The fact that attendance and demand for Red Sox games is so strong easily makes up for that 5,000 seat deficit. Secondly, the game-day revenue the Red Sox take is only one revenue stream, and it's not necessarily the most important one. NESN pays the Red Sox the 10th-highest TV rights in the game, and since the Red Sox own 80% of NESN, they then collect the profits associated with carriage fees and ad revenue on top of that.

And of course, the actual profit that a baseball team earns in any given year is dwarfed by the growth in the value of the franchise overall, and the Red Sox are worth $3 billion more than they were when John Henry bought them. They could easily lower ticket prices and still be one of the richest teams in the league.

 

[Sandy Leon Trotsky]

I don’t care about this anymore

 

[snowmanny]

I do believe Mookie and I thought Chad Finn’s recent piece in the Globe on this was excellent. I’ve always felt the way that he so succinctly puts it - if the Sox couldn’t find a way to keep Mookie, what are we even doing here? What is a team like the Red Sox working towards if not to be able to invest whatever it takes to keep a generational, homegrown, beloved talent like Mookie?

This trade continues to leave an extraordinarily bitter taste in my mouth and I’m not sure what it will take for me to get back to feeling the devotion to the Sox that I did pre-trade.

I totally agree with this. I get and respect the dissenting opinions on this board. I get and respect the process of due diligence in determining if someone is worth the money. I appreciate and respect the four titles. But I don't think that the Boston Red Sox should have even entertained the notion of Mookie Betts leaving town.