The poll is worse faith than the level of faith I have in the Sox front office at the least.
I'm working from a set of assumptions here that others can disagree with of course, namely that
- There was some sort of obligation, from very high up, that Betts had been given a reasonable offer and declined, so the ownership wanted him traded for value. This has been discussed ad nauseum - and I personally think the Dodgers deal is a good one, but I also think the reality of COVID played a lot into Betts locking up a deal at that point whereas he may have tested the market in a regular universe. If you think Betts would have taken the Dodgers deal from the Sox without COVID causing a ton of uncertainty, I totally get a different feeling. I'm don't think he does.
- That very few fans want the Sox to match X's deal with San Diego and that it would be a bad idea, long term, to do so. This isn't to say the Sox shouldn't have been more aggressive up front to try and get him before his FA value was realized but namely that once FA hit, the Sox trying to match SD's offer would be a bad team decision.
- That Dombrowski's extensions put the Sox in, at least, a short term very difficult position in terms of having a ton of cash tied up in unproductive players that likely couldn't be moved easily.
- 2020 sucked but was in such a weird environment that I don't assign a ton of value to it in evaluation.
So, on the good side, I think that Bloom's team is at least reasonably good at identifying players who may be undervalued or prime to deliver performances beyond that the numbers have bared out and getting them in on shorter, reasonable deals. Maybe not tot the degree Tampa pulled off in the past but Tampa like. Not fool proof, as no one is, but in 2021 and 2022 you had Hernandez (2021), Whitlock (2021-2022), Pivetta (2021-22), Renfroe (2021), Wacha (2022), Schreiber (2022), and Refsnyder (2022) deliver 1 WAR+ (or so) on relatively cheap contracts or as minimal cost pickups, as well as some legitimately useful guys lower on the list. I think there also should be some early credit, albeit nothing in stone, on the farm system elements. The Dombrowski era IFA classes combined with Bloom's draft and trade classes, has added some much needed depth in the farm. I totally agree with detractors that the one biggest prospect is a pick any of us could make and we probably won't know a lot of this for years (some of the Dombrowski IFAs are just rising now), but it's at least looking better than it did and we've seen some of the issue with getting limited system help in the past couple years. It's probably worth noting that at least for Soxprospects, a ton of those late-Dombo era prospects littering the 5-20 ranks were not there in ranking just before the end of the season and it can take a while for draft classes to really start shuffling out what may represent longer term value - that half of them are 2020-2022 pickups is pretty nice IMO.
I also think that we as a fan base may be expecting a bit much, if I'm being honest. The discourse in the thread makes it seem like the team won 55 games with a 300m payroll last year and I'm not gonna pretend it felt good but the 26 man payroll by the end of the year was just a tick above league average due to the huge amount of cash on injured and departed players. Even including Story I don't think they'd hit Top 10. There was still a TON of cash in low value assets - something like 80m for 2.7 WAR between Price, Sale, JDM, and Eo is going to hamper most teams and none of those really fall under the current FO. I still think they should've been better than they were last year even with that but a team without farm contributions and that huge glut of cash doing nothing is gonna have a hard time producing unless they are spending an even larger pile of cash or have a ton of high quality, underpaid assets.
On the bad side of what Bloom and the FO on the whole can control, I think that as good as he has been on swapping low level assets and getting value back, the trades involving bigger names have been pretty disastrous. The Renfroe and Benintendi trades had some logic at the time that doesn't seem to have worked out and involved relying on some pretty flawed assets to be something they couldn't be. The Betts deal is a whole different thing but even with the caveats I think you want more than one of those three pieces to end up being useful even moderate term. I also worry on a larger scale about the Sox continuing to go hyper conservative on pre-FA extension offers. The Braves experience or the Julio or Wander signings are very different beasts, but I think lowball extension offers to long-standing team talent only a year prior to FA isn't just not working and it's causing a lot of sour feelings that are playing out. I am personally very hesitant to accept the Betts or X post-mortem interviews (or of their mouthpieces) at honest value as they do have incentive (both them and their agents) to make themselves look good as well even to the fans of the team they are leaving, but there's no reason to dismiss it out of hand either. To the point of others, you generally need star players to win titles or you need guys who can be star players in runs even if they aren't all the time. I am hoping that when the right player comes up, that they won't hesitate to throw out an inflated, long-term deal if that player can bring a championship to Boston - we just don't know yet and I don't personally think that giving Xander SD Money would be good for the Sox...though getting Xander on a beefed up Story-esque deal two years ago absolutely would've been if possible. I suspect, and worry, the Devers* experience will give us some clarity on this.
To wbcd's point, it does all come down to talent evaluation in the end though. Either Bloom's FO will identify enough players to put together a winning team or he won't - you hope for more Pivettas and Whitlocks and Refsnyders and fewer Franchys and 2022 JBJs. I'm at a solid mid point right now but it's incomplete and really could go anywhere.
* I don't think Devers or late-game X are comparable to the Braves or Julio/Wander experience as I think there are legitimate long-term concerns on both players whereas the other teams are buying out a ton of arbitration years and 20s years for these players.
