How the Red Sox can climb back out of their vortex of ugliness

The dramatic competitive retreat of the Boston Red Sox was probably inevitable to some degree because of choices made five, four and three years ago. But the rapidity of the team's decline is still stunning, given that 22 months ago, one of Major League Baseball's cornerstone franchises had its best year ever, 119 wins with the regular season and postseason combined -- the second most in MLB history. And now, 2020 might be the Red Sox's worst year ever.

The departure of Alex Cora, one of baseball's best managers, and the trade of Mookie Betts accelerated Boston's spiral into the vortex of ugliness in a year of transition. But through Saturday's games, the Red Sox had the worst ERA at 6.10, with opponents hitting .289 -- the worst in the American League by a margin of 25 points. Only the Seattle Mariners had given up more walks than Boston's 89 -- an average of nearly 4.4 per game.

It's a relatively small sample size of games, and the problems are augmented by an injury to Chris Sale (losing him to Tommy John surgery); the inclusion of David Price to balance some of the money in the Betts trade; and the manifestation of the coronavirus pandemic, which forced Eduardo Rodriguez off the field and created a layer of the unknown about the lefty's future. But the early numbers also reflect the enormously deep hole that the Red Sox are in as they move forward, because as any longstanding Boston fan knows -- while even the worst Red Sox teams usually find ways be good offensively, they can never be competitive in baseball's competitive division until the pitching turns.

Here's the good news: Chaim Bloom, the head of baseball operations for the Red Sox, demonstrated through his time with the Tampa Bay Rays that he's really good at constructing a steady flow of pitching. Tampa Bay opened spring training in February with as much mound depth as any franchise in baseball.

Here's the big question: How quickly can this happen?

In Tampa Bay, Bloom's Rays always had the luxury of time. Because the Rays always have one of the lowest payrolls in baseball, the fan base never really expects them to compete dollar for dollar or win for win, year after year. In Bloom's time with the Rays, Tampa Bay had the flexibility to keep slow the progression of its most talented young pitchers, to let them marinate in Class A, Double-A and in Triple-A, so that by the time they were promoted to the big leagues and their service-time clocks began, they were as fully developed as possible. Former Tampa Bay pitcher Matt Moore had 4½ years in the minors when he was called up, Jeremy Hellickson had 5½ years, Chris Archer 6½ seasons.

It's hard to imagine Boston fans -- or more importantly, Red Sox ownership -- waiting that long for the ascension of a talent like Archer.

It's always possible that with the benefit of a greater payroll, Bloom's tactics will shift somewhat, in the way that Andrew Friedman's did when he moved from Tampa Bay to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Friedman was recently involved in the massive commitment to Betts, whose $365 million contract represents about five seasons of the Rays' total payroll. But in L.A., Friedman maintained a small-market's team adherence to drafting and developing, which is the core strength of the Dodgers -- Walker Buehler, Will Smith, Gavin Lux and Dustin May are among the elite young players picked in the second half of the first round or later. Bloom, like Friedman, is likely to always have a devotion to the farm system. But it might be three or four or five years before Bloom's foundation of drafts and development begins to fully show up in the big leagues.

With Betts and Price off the books, the Red Sox have more financial flexibility and could be one of the few aggressive teams in the upcoming free-agent market. Evaluators say the quality of pitching available this winter is thin, especially in comparison to last winter's group that was headlined by Gerrit Cole and Stephen Strasburg. Trevor Bauer, Robbie Ray and Marcus Stroman are some of the better names. Given the expectation that the free-agent class is going to be bigger than ever, with a higher number of players non-tendered, the Red Sox could also aim to cash in and find value with medium-sized bets -- much in the way that the Astros did with Charlie Morton before the 2017 season, signing him to a two-year, $14 million with the belief that he could improve with some specific adjustments. (Houston turned out to be exactly right, with Morton throwing the final pitch of the 2017 World Series.)

But Ben Cherington, the former general manager of the Red Sox, learned firsthand about the fickle nature of ownership. He and his staff built one of the best groups of prospects in baseball -- Betts, Xander Bogaerts, Jackie Bradley Jr. and others. But with Cherington playing the long game for broader organization stability, Red Sox owner John Henry suddenly moved into a win-now mode and hired David Dombrowski to run baseball operations. Cherington left and Dombrowski did exactly what he was hired to do, flipping a lot of organizational assets in prospects and money to win, and the Red Sox steamrollered the rest of baseball in 2018 for the team's fourth title in 15 years.

But Henry changed course again. Dombrowski was fired, Bloom hired, and Bloom must now try to find enough pitching for the Red Sox to find relevance among the Yankees (who are stacked), the Blue Jays -- whose rebuild is off to an excellent start -- and the Rays, arguably one of baseball's best teams. Friends of Bloom say he went into the job with his eyes wide open, understanding how much work needs to be done -- and fully aware of the possibility he might run out of time before Henry's patience, and that of Red Sox fans, runs out fully.

• Teammates have noticed that the very first thing that DJ LeMahieu does upon his arrival at the park is pull on his Yankees cap. The first thing. Every day.

Other players might lounge at their locker a bit, maybe get something to eat and then, when they prepare to go out on the field for stretching, that's when they'll put on their cap. But with LeMahieu, it's the very first thing, every day. Adam Ottavino, who played with LeMahieu in Colorado, has told other Yankees that the infielder would do the same thing when he was with the Rockies.

"Very old-school," said reliever Zack Britton, who says LeMahieu reminds him of J.J. Hardy, his former teammate with the Orioles who was very focused on preparing and playing and was always drama-free.

• Yankees staffers give Britton enormous credit for being an exceptional leader through baseball's coronavirus year, in keeping the players informed, in having the wherewithal to rapidly gather consensus to make decisions. Britton is the team's union representative, and he joked that Courtney Leggett, his wife -- who is an attorney -- might opine that during the shutdown of April and May and June the pitcher spent too much time communicating with teammates. Sometimes, he said, he would spend the better part of the day exchanging texts or messages to provide as much information as possible to his teammates, and to get feedback. "They would tell me how they were feeling," he said, "or I would try to separate fact from fiction for them."

Britton said he could do only so much, anyway, and the fact that the Yankees have players who are engaged and invested in the process has made decision-making better and more efficient when necessary, such as when the team's games in Philadelphia were canceled. The Yankees' quickly pivoted and made the decision to travel to Baltimore to play the Orioles.

• When Cleveland's Zach Plesac took to video to complain about the media coverage of his violation of the health and safety protocol -- a video taken while driving a car, without a seat belt -- what he clearly missed was that his teammates were far more outraged than any reporter or columnist. And this was the last straw before the Indians demoted Plesac and teammate Mike Clevinger -- two of the most important players for the team to compete for the playoffs -- to make a larger point about the accountability to the others in the organization in 2020.

It would have been better for Plesac and Clevinger if they had simply owned their mistakes to teammates, embraced the extra layers of health and safety protocol required by the team, and then moved on. Players and staffers have seen how outbreaks happened with the Marlins and Cardinals, and there were Cleveland teammates so upset by what Plesac and Clevinger did -- creating possible COVID-19 exposure for others -- that some considered opting out if the two players returned to the roster immediately. The front office stepped in and put the two pitchers into a baseball version of a timeout.

"We're only as strong as our weakest link," said a player, and right now, the peer trust in Plesac and Clevinger to do what they can to protect the likes of Carlos Carrasco must be rebuilt. Plesac's video really hurt him in the eyes of others wearing the same uniform.

• Randy Dobnak of the Minnesota Twins has always been good at generating ground balls, but his improvement this year has been notable, with his ratio improving from a 2.4 ground ball-to-fly ball ratio to 3.6, and through Friday's games, Dobnak had a 0.90 ERA, best in the American League.

"The sinker this year is diving more than it ever has," he said, "and I do think that has a lot do with everything. I've worked a lot, during quarantine, on making my changeup and breaking ball more consistent. I think everything works together really well, playing off the sinker to create all of the weak contact and keeping the ball on the ground."

Opponents are hitting only .183 against Dobnak, 17th best in the big leagues. Among the first 76 batters he has faced this year, he hasn't given up a home run.

• As the Astros' difficult year continues, many evaluators and agents believe there will be an exodus from Houston because some players -- even those who weren't part of the 2017 team -- want to move away from the toxicity of an association with the franchise. George Springer, Yuli Gurriel, Michael Brantley and Josh Reddick will be free agents this fall, and next year Carlos Correa, Justin Verlander and Zack Greinke could reach the market. "They've got a perception problem," one agent said.

There are always shifting tides for whether a particular team is desirable. In the late 1980s, for example, the chaos around the Yankees made them a club that many free agents mostly used for leverage but avoided. In the late 1990s that changed, with some veterans hoping to become part of what was seen as an excellent clubhouse culture. By the mid-2000s, some free agents viewed the Yankees as too corporate.

So it's very possible that the perception of the Astros will change -- especially through enhanced financial offers. Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman are the only veterans under contract beyond 2021.

Baseball Tonight Podcast

Editor's note: Buster was on vacation last week, but here are the podcast episodes featuring a cast of pinch hitters.