On the eve of the trade deadline, a Red Sox player sat on a table inside the visitors clubhouse in Houston, glancing at his phone and scrolling for news, waiting for some indication of the team's plans. He expressed uncertainty about the front-office's plans. Buy? Sell? He was unsure, and no one from the baseball operations department had made the trip to Houston to ease players' concerns. Alone with his thoughts, the player wondered: If the front office dealt away players, how extensive would the teardown be? If they added to the roster, would it be enough to help? "I'm not sure how much support we're going to get," he said, with a resigned wave of disgust.
The confusion in the clubhouse remained even after the deadline. The Red Sox had added veterans Eric Hosmer and Tommy Pham, but traded longtime catcher Christian Vazquez, prompting shortstop Xander Bogaerts to say out loud to reporters what others in the organization felt. "I wouldn't say we got better because we lost [Vazquez]," Bogaerts said.
Since the deadline moves, the Red Sox slump has deepened, six losses in eight games, and the fog over the direction of the team has thickened as the team has drifted into last place in the AL East. Sources high within the franchise say the modus operandi has never changed: The ownership that has supported four championships in the past two decades wants Chaim Bloom, the team's head of baseball operations, to do what he can to construct a roster that can consistently contend for a championship, considering the front office sturdily resourced to do so. The Red Sox again have one of the highest payrolls in baseball, to the degree that they will pay a luxury tax for their spending in 2022.
But the team that traded away Mookie Betts for a package of young players -- none of whom turned out to be difference-makers -- is in jeopardy of losing two more of their homegrown stars in the next 15 months. Bogaerts can opt out of his contract after this season, and might well become a free agent. Rafael Devers, the team's best offensive player, does not have a long-term contract and could be a free agent after next season. Both will demand high prices, but since Boston's signing of Chris Sale early in the 2019 season -- executed before Bloom took over -- the Red Sox rank 13th among the 30 teams in free agent spending, according to the research of ESPN analyst Paul Hembekides.
A top front-office official from another team echoed a question similar to one that has reverberated among Boston fans and bounced around the clubhouse: "What the hell are they doing up there?"
The more pertinent question could be: How will the ownership group, led by John Henry, react to the backlash of an increasingly unhappy Red Sox Nation? Because even through Henry has had many successes, he has demonstrated he will veer sharply in his planning. Grady Little, the manager fired after a crushing loss in the 2003 AL Championship Series, knows this. Theo Epstein, who built the first of his Hall of Fame credentials with the Red Sox but departed, knows this. Ben Cherington, who was demoted despite constructing one championship and shaping the foundation of another, knows this. And Bloom's predecessor, Dave Dombrowski, who was fired less than a year after the Red Sox won the 2018 World Series, knows this.
Bloom will soon learn whether Henry's support for him is intact, or if he will change course again, in an offseason in which the Red Sox could have more flexibility than they've had in years. If Bogaerts opts out of his deal, the team will have only two significant contracts remaining on its books -- the last two years of Sale's deal, for $27.5 million annually in 2023 and 2024, and the bulk of the $140 million investment in Trevor Story, signed this spring. "We're going to be in a position to be aggressive," one organizational official said.
Sources say that once Boston's season is over -- perhaps at the end of the regular season, or, if the team somehow rebounds from its recent descent, after the playoffs -- it will attempt to reignite extension talks with Bogaerts, who signed a team-friendly extension in 2019 because of his preference at that time to play his whole career with the Red Sox. There will also be another effort to lock up Devers.
But what occurs in those negotiations will be critical in the fan perception of the Red Sox and Bloom, which has been largely shaped by the decision to trade Betts rather than pay him the sort of deal that he eventually got from the Los Angeles Dodgers: $365 million, with about $115 million of that deferred for more than a decade, pushing down the present-day value to something closer to $300 million.
Beyond Bogaerts, beyond Devers, the Red Sox also will look to fill multiple spots in their rotation, and in their everyday lineup. Nathan Eovaldi and Rich Hill will be eligible for free agency, as will designated hitter J.D. Martinez, catcher Kevin Plawecki and outfielder Enrique Hernandez.
In 2021, some of Bloom's small-bore deals -- like the signing of Hernandez -- paid off as the team built on a wild-card berth and reached the ALCS. But this year, a lot of the choices have contributed to the failure.
"I think Chaim is really good at what he does," a rival evaluator said, "but there's no getting around [the fact] that they've made mistakes."
Looking to take advantage of Hunter Renfroe's value and bolster the farm system, Bloom swapped Renfroe for prospects and Jackie Bradley Jr.; Bradley was recently released, and the Red Sox have struggled to replicate Renfroe's offense and defense. In fact, Boston's first basemen and outfielders rank among MLB's least productive in those spots. Matt Barnes, signed to an extension in 2021, lost his job as closer before being shifted to the injured list.
Alex Verdugo, who was the centerpiece of the Boston return for Betts, is now 26 years old with a .705 OPS and only 33 extra-base hits in 105 games; his OPS+ of 94 casts him as a below-average major league player. "They traded one of the 10 best players in baseball," the evaluator said, "and they don't have anything to show for it."
The problem that has undermined the team started manifesting before Bloom arrived. Sale signed his $145 million extension -- an investment to retain an industry ace -- in the spring of 2019, and following Tommy John surgery in the spring of 2020, the Red Sox hoped he would finally front the rotation in 2022. Instead, he suffered a rib fracture during the labor stoppage, an injury that kept him sidelined for most of this season. When he finally returned in July, he contributed 5⅔ innings before his pinky finger was shattered by an Aaron Hicks line drive in Yankee Stadium. Once again, the Red Sox lay in wait, anticipating he might return to make an impact, but those hopes were wrecked when Sale fell off his bicycle and broke his right wrist last week.
Sale is expected to return to the rotation next spring, but really, there's no way to know what he'll do. He'll be in his age 34 season, having thrown just 48⅓ innings in the first three years of his deal. Maybe Bogaerts will be there in the clubhouse with him; maybe not. Maybe Devers' future with the team will be ensured by then, or maybe the Red Sox will be faced with the same quandary they had with the unsigned Betts, about when is the best time to trade an elite player. Maybe they'll hit big on some of their winter acquisitions; maybe they won't, just more transactional foundering that would be disqualifying in an AL East that is increasingly competitive, with the emergence of the Orioles.
Maybe Bloom will remain cemented in his stewardship of the roster and payroll choices; maybe not, if the past tendencies of the team's owners manifests again. The fog of uncertainty around the franchise will remain until the Red Sox start to win big again.