Massarotti: 2015 Red Sox Season A Failure -- With Some Signs Of Hope
BOSTON (CBS) -- And so this is how it ends for the 2015 Red Sox, with just three games to go now, in Cleveland, before the Boston baseball season reaches another inglorious end. But failure and frustration actually have given way to a measure of promise and optimism this time, even as the Red Sox prepare to pack up their things during that brilliant time, October, when they customarily played on.
So we ask you: Was this season a success? Or was it again an unmitigated failure?
The right answer, of course, is that 2015 was a little of both, which is part cop-out, part truth. Sadly, the Red Sox have not played a truly meaningful game, at least for them, since July. These Red Sox returned from the All-Star break to lose seven straight, 8-of-9, 11-of-13. Just like that, with exactly 60 games to go, they were a dreadful 44-58, on pace for a 70-92 season, in the kind of nosedive that has become all too familiar in recent years.
Let's get this straight, with no grayness or uncertainty: In this era, with their resources, the Red Sox should never, ever fail to be a playoff contender. Some years they will make it. Some years they won't. Some years they will threaten or succeed to win it all. But the Red Sox should be something reasonably close to a 90-win team every year, just as they were during the nine-year reign of former general manager Theo Epstein, when they averaged slightly more than 93 wins per season. Well Theo and his Chicago Cubs have won 90-plus again this year – 94 and counting, to be exact – while the Red Sox and Indians will be fighting it out this weekend to see who can finish .500 or, in the case of the Indians, better.
Sorry, but even an 81-81 season just isn't good enough, at least in the short term, no matter how improbable that seemed two months ago.
Former general manager Ben Cherington knows that as well as anyone now because it cost him his job. Dave Dombrowski knows it, too, because an underachieving team cost him one job (Detroit) while earning him another (Boston). And rest assured that John Farrell knows it, too, all as he battles cancer.
Will Farrell be back? Presumably, based on reports like the one by CSNNE's Sean McAdam, who said that Farrell's job will be waiting for him as long as he is healthy, though even that leaves room for interpretation.
Complicated? You bet it is. On the one hand, Dombrowski deserves to pick his own manager. On the other, Farrell deserves latitude. But then, with the Red Sox, nothing is ever easy.
And yet, amid all of upheaval of a tumultuous August that saw a change at the top of baseball operations and one at the manager's post, a curious thing happened: the youngest Red Sox began to blossom. Xander Bogaerts has been the most consistent of the Red Sox all year long, contending for a batting championship. Mookie Betts still has an outside chance at a 20-20 season. Blake Swihart has a .305 batting average and .813 OPS since the All-Star break while Travis Shaw checks in at .281 and .869. Eduardo Rodriguez won as many games (10) as any Sox starter but Wade Miley (11). Entering the last start of his season, Henry Owens has a better ERA (3.84), than Miley, Joe Kelly or Rick Porcello.
Whether those performances will carry into next spring obviously remains to be seen, but we said it then (in the spring) and we'll say it now (in the fall): as much as the playoffs were a goal, the Red Sox needed to build something sustainable this year, from the inside out. And so don't look now, but what the Red Sox appear to have entering next year and beyond is a certified, bona fide nucleus of young talent, which is something they have not had in a long, long time.
All of this brings us back to Dombrowski, whose first winter with the team will be a critical one. In repeated interviews since joining the Red Sox in August, Dombrowski has made it clear that he believes this team is reasonably close to contending. He also has made it quite clear that the Red Sox need bullpen help and a front-end starter, the latter a noticeable contrast to the rotation depth the Red Sox were preaching a year ago at this time.
Will Dombrowski acquire that pitching through free agency? The trade market? Both? Much of that will be determined in the coming weeks. Given the unstable nature of the last five Sox seasons, holding onto the elite young talent seems a priority. Regardless, as has been the case far too often over the course of team history, Red Sox winters have become far more important than the summers, and there is now an unmistakable chill in the New England air.
Though this time, at least, we can already see some of the signs of spring.
Tony Massarotti co-hosts the Felger and Massarotti Show on 98.5 The Sports Hub weekdays from 2-6 p.m. Follow him on Twitter @TonyMassarotti. You can read more from Tony by clicking here.
