Championships are forever. There are no asterisks. If the Warriors finish off the Cavaliers, their title will not say, “Yeah, they won, but all four of their playoff opponents were often without a key backcourt piece.”
The Marlins have been a laughingstock organization for pretty much all but two of their 23 seasons, but they won it all in those two seasons. Where do the Cubs sign up for that? Or the Mariners. Heck, even the Mets would have taken those last 23 years over their title-less stretch.
So the Red Sox’s 2013 title is their title. It is forever. Every decade they will get to bring back all the bearded wonders for a Fenway love-fest.
But with some perspective of what came immediately before it and what has come since, can we ask: Is it in the conversation for the luckiest championship in major league history? An aberration blessed by good fortune. That title now stands as a rose surrounded by a cesspool. It is not all that dissimilar from the football Giants’ last title, a parade amid playoff-less failure. But the Giants never quite did push-ups on rock bottom like these Red Sox are.
Boston missed the playoffs in 2010, then again in 2011 with a historic collapse fattened in ignominy by “beer and fried chicken.” The response in 2012 was Bobby Valentine, a last-place finish and the franchise’s worst record since 1965.
When the Red Sox won it all in 2013, it was easy to blame all that occurred in 2012 on Valentine – the easiest target in the sport not named Alex Rodriguez. But since the Duck Boat parade, Boston finished last in 2014 and is in last place now as arguably the most disappointing team in the sport. The Red Sox are an AL-worst 98-129 since the beginning of 2014. That is no longer a blip that can be dismissed. That is with John Farrell as the manager and Valentine as the executive director of intercollegiate athletics at Sacred Heart University.
These Red Sox are not the Marlins. They have not won and torn it apart. They have a team-record payroll that should top $200 million by season’s end. In other words, they are trying – vigorously. Yet losing – ingloriously. They are run by smart people and have talented players. That combination – combined with an AL East in which no one has run away – has kept me from writing this column for weeks. Heck, I am still not convinced that these Red Sox aren’t going to run off 12 out of 15 to get back in it.
However, the evidence continues to mount that 2013 was the aberration, not 2012, 2014 and (more and more, it seems) 2015. The Red Sox are an AL-worst minus-62 in run differential. If this persists, this case the 2013 title was among the luckiest ever only will grow (I corresponded with Red Sox GM Ben Cherington about this topic and he did not wish to comment):
1. Only one time in major league history was an organization willing to take on more than a quarter of a billion dollars in contracts during a season. Not even George Steinbrenner would ever have approved that. But the Dodgers had just been bought in 2012 by a group headed by the deep-pocketed Guggenheim Partners. New ownership was trying to re-energize its fan base and distance the organization from the penurious rule of Frank McCourt by adding stars and building payroll.
So the Red Sox got a financial-get-out-of-jail card in August 2012 when the Dodgers acquired Carl Crawford, Adrian Gonzalez and Josh Beckett. Without those monetary moons aligning, the Red Sox could not have had the payroll maneuverability to …
2. Go six-for-seven in free agents after the 2012 season. Ryan Dempster was the only one from that class that also included Stephen Drew, Jonny Gomes, Mike Napoli, David Ross, Koji Uehara and Shane Victorino that did not have a strong season in the 2013 title year (it should be noted Victorino’s three-year, $39 million deal has been dreadful ever since).
Usually if a team bats .500 on free agents, it is doing well. Six for seven is unprecedented. And there would be a round of high fives for the Red Sox as baseball savants, except the big free-agent contracts they signed before that ($142 million for Crawford) and since (Hanley Ramirez, Pablo Sandoval), they almost immediately have wanted to dump.
If anything, that six for seven …
3. Made the Red Sox arrogant. They believed they had found a combination of spreading the money around and trusting their feeder system that would make them a powerhouse for years.
They got out of the mega-contracts, particularly for starters. They low-balled Jon Lester essentially out of Boston and convinced themselves they could win without an ace. But acquiring and extending Wade Miley and Rick Porcello has not gone well. They believed they could not only take on a temperamental player such as Ramirez, but play him out of position in left field. That has been a mistake.
Xander Bogaerts played so well in the 2013 postseason after a late-season cameo that Boston thought in 2014 it could go with him at short and fellow rookie Jackie Bradley Jr. in center. That killed the Red Sox to the point where they ended up signing Drew again with the 2014 season in progress and demoting Bradley. They believed the Dodgers had not only solved their financial problems with that big trade, but had been fleeced into giving up Rubby De La Rosa and Allen Webster, too. But neither of those pitchers worked in Boston and were traded for Miley – compounding the problem.
To this point, Mookie Betts, Blake Swihart and Rusney Castillo have failed to honor their prospect hype, raising questions if Boston’s feeder system is the monster that is boasted. Or perhaps the …
4. Dysfunction at Fenway is undermining the growth of talented players. The removal of Valentine was supposed to solve the toxicity around the team. Keep in mind, though, Valentine’s opponents wanted to hire Dale Sveum, who instead went to the old Red Sox regime now running the Cubs, led by Theo Epstein, and demonstrated he was not much of a manager by finishing last twice.
In place of Valentine, Boston hired Farrell, who had been the pitching coach for Terry Francona’s 2007 title team. When the Red Sox won in Farrell’s first season, again, it was easy to just trash Valentine. But if the 2015 season stays on pace, Farrell will have been a manager five years between Boston and Toronto and had one above-.500 campaign. That occurred …
5. In the year of Boston Strong. I watched up close how the tragedy of 9/11 inspired a Yankees dynasty running on fumes in 2001. Suddenly, the Yankees, unified by an outside event of horror, were being cheered by the country, which provided extra motivation to get to Game 7 of the World Series.
The Boston Marathon bombing galvanized a city around a team in 2013. The Red Sox unified with Boston to honor the dead and injured, but also to win to return normalcy and happiness. Those Red Sox had a random outside event near the outset of their schedule buoy them for an entire year to perform cohesively and excellently in a way that we have yet to see again.