The Red Sox enter the All-Star break in last place, with the lingering hope that the Olde Towne Team can still make a run and close the 6.5 game gap with the first place Yankees. It’s been a season of disappointment, with a lack of pitching (Boston is 28th in the league in team ERA) and execution (a lack of hitting with runners in scoring position, not to mention the disaster that was Hanley Ramirez playing left field).
And beyond the short term debacle, phrases like “immensely screwed” have been thrown around in describing the future of the Red Sox. It paints a grim picture for a team still only two years removed from its third World Series win of the 21st century.
How true are the prognostications of doom? Avoiding, if only for a moment, the short term news cycle that all-too-often engulfs many regular Boston baseball observers, it becomes clear that the Red Sox are actually not in terrible shape. Still, it probably means that this season is going to be a wash (an infuriating notion for local fans who watched a similar spectacle only a year ago).
Consider the chart at the top of the page, measuring Red Sox payrolls from 1988 (when USA Today’s data began) through the current season. After a precipitous rise in the late 1990s and early part of the new century, the payroll has fluctuated with a slight upward trend.
Looking forward not only to 2016 but beyond, Boston has a few worryingly bad contracts. Hanley Ramirez’s deal, given his absolute inability to play defense, seems like a steep price to pay (averaging $22 million through 2019). And Pablo Sandoval’s contract, averaging $19 million through 2020, also looks bad for the final years of the deal. Whether or not Dustin Pedroia will be anything close to the player he was when he signed his 8-year, $110 million deal in 2021 (at age 37) is also highly debatable. Rusney Castillo? We won’t even go there.
Then again, the Red Sox aren’t necessarily weighed down beyond repair by those contracts. Because if that looks like a bad array of deals, take a gander at the Yankees’ payroll. It’s lined with terrible contracts that extend not only beyond this season, but in some cases to players with lower potential upside.
That misses the point though, because as FiveThirtyEight recently demonstrated (in their inimitable way), money still buys success. Bad contracts will hurt teams like the Red Sox and Yankees, but won’t prevent them from potentially still doing well.
And that brings us to the good news for Red Sox fans: The team’s farm system is finally beginning to deliver again. After a lengthy period of not replenishing the talent it fostered during the post-2004 era, Boston’s minor league system is slowly making a comeback.
Unlike the Yankees (who were judged earlier in 2015 to have only the 20th best farm system), Boston has not only been getting its young talent valuable big league experience, but has also begun to see some of the youngsters deliver. Xander Bogaerts leads the AL in hits among shortstops. Mookie Betts, after struggling in April and part of May, has carried an OPS over .900 in June and July.
The list of promising young players goes on (Eduardo Rodriguez may not have been drafted by Boston, but is a 22-year-old talent nonetheless).
It’s also worth noting that both Mike Napoli ($16 million) and Shane Victorino ($13 million) come off the books after 2015, clearing space to add needed help.
And though the Red Sox received quite a bit of flack for saying no to Jon Lester but yes to Rick Porcello, there might actually be light at the end of that tunnel as well. Porcello has been indefensible in the season’s first half. There is no point in denying that. Of course, Lester hasn’t exactly been at his 2014 level either. And while Sox fans would obviously prefer even mediocre Lester stats to the truly putrid performance of his supposed replacement in the rotation, the long term view again supports the conclusion that the Red Sox will come out better.
Unless Porcello continues to defy every previous season of his career and remain bad forever, he will at some point stabilize. With that in mind, his contract length will be managable. It’s only four years, covering the absolute prime years of his career. Lester’s deal, meanwhile, will ensure that he’s paid a greater amount well after his best years are behind him.
Of course, this means little for the short term. The Red Sox have several major flaws in the makeup of the team’s 2015 roster, mostly on the pitching side (though not limited to that). Even beyond the internal issues, leapfrogging every team in the AL East will prove a tough road.
Still, the long term future, while far from guaranteed to be positive, is much closer to being deemed “promising” than “doomed.” The team’s salary situation is not unresolvable. And the crop of young players are beginning to deliver. Boston may not return to the World Series in 2015, but a return trip in the coming years is far from out of the question.
