Like it or not, the Boston baseball season begins on Thursday. And just because things seem bleak, well, that hardly means the 2024 Red Sox outlook is unimportant.
So what should you expect from this year’s model? That depends on your perspective as the Red Sox continue to spin their wheels during what feels like a never-ending rebuild.
Given the Red Sox’ resources, after all, what you should expect is a perennial playoff contender that threatens for championships, however you want to define that. (But you’ll generally know it when you see it.) What you can expect now feels like something altogether different, especially as the Red Sox come off both another last-place finish (their third in four years) and an offseason that might have been even worse.
Seriously. What the %#>! was Tom Werner thinking when he said, back in November, that the Red Sox were prepared to go “full throttle”? And whatever his answer was, it made things worse. It also made the Red Sox look clownish, disconnected and out-of-touch – and it ultimately helped make the outlook for the Red Sox and their fans, at a minimum, blustery. Did the Sox want Yoshinobu Yamamoto? Sure. But really wanting a player means doing what the Sox did back in 2007, when they blew everyone out of the water for Daisuke Matsuzaka and had a baseball operation that was rapidly becoming the envy of everyone in Major League Baseball. Larry Lucchino and Theo Epstein meant business because John Henry and Werner meant business. Boston had become a superpower (and not just in baseball). Now it feels like the Sox are part of a portfolio like some small- or mid-cap index fund.
If baseball were a Broadway show, the 2024 Red Sox would be part of the ensemble. Or they’d be in the orchestra pit.
So, again, what can you expect from the 2024 Red Sox? Let’s start with the bare minimum that any franchise should give its fan base: