I’m Not Ready for Bad Baseball
Are you excited for baseball season? Not me. As a fan of the Boston Red Sox, 2024 marks the least excited I’ve ever been for the start of a season since I started following the sport in 2005. The Red Sox are the most successful MLB team of the 21st century. They have four World Series rings, including one that ended an 86-year championship drought and another that concluded a season where they went 108-54. There was also the year when they had the most hyped rookie from Japan in Daisuke Matsuzaka and won a title (2007), and the year they won after radical Islamic terrorists bombed the Boston Marathon (2013).
Those wins provide fans with great memories but little to look forward to in the present. The Sox are coming off back-to-back last-place finishes, and various projections, including those from FanGraphs, have them finishing last for a third consecutive season. If that happens, as people expect, it’ll also mark the fourth time in five seasons that the Red Sox do it, as they were the worst team in the American League East in the lockdown-shortened 2020 MLB season.
General manager Craig Breslow must have one of the easier jobs in America since the team refuses to sign talented players as was the case under his predecessor, Chaim Bloom. Having a different GM and the same problem lends credence to the idea that Red Sox ownership, spearheaded by John Henry, has little interest in putting together competent ballclubs. The team no longer signs big-name free agents. It signed starting pitcher Lucas Giolito, who tore his UCL during spring training, and aging first baseman CJ Cron, who struggled away from Coors Field last season. The team signed Cron despite having no pressing need for a first baseman or designated hitter. Yippee.
The Sox were once great, but now ownership takes its fans for granted, understanding that, while ticket sales may slip, many people will still go because it's the Red Sox, it's something to do, and they were good at one point. The team’s struggles also make me wonder: how do fans of other, less successful franchises do it? How do people root for the Kansas City Royals, Oakland Athletics, or Los Angeles Angels? A few years back, the Angels had Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani, and Albert Pujols, and they still struggled. They’re now without two of those three players, and Trout last played in at least 120 games back in 2019. The team's last playoff appearance came in 2014, and fans have little reason to expect that drought to end this season.
The Oakland Athletics were a punching bag last year, going 50-112, and ownership wants to relocate the team to Las Vegas. The Athletics consistently rank near the bottom of the league in payroll and, in 2024, increased leaguewide acceptance and use of sabermetrics dilutes an advantage the franchise had 20 to 25 years ago; the movie Moneyball also ignores that the team had great homegrown starting pitching.
The Kansas City Royals are another one. The team made back-to-back World Series appearances in 2014 and 2015, capturing the crown in ‘15, but the franchise has struggled since. It hasn’t had one winning season since 2015 and is coming off a 106-loss year in 2023. These three teams also have lousy farm systems, according to The Athletic. The Royals' farm system ranks 25th out of 30 teams, while the Angels and Athletics rank 29th and 30th, respectively. Imagine how worse things would be without MLB's communist draft system that rewards lousy teams and punishes good ones.
As a Massachusetts resident, I have one baseball season I can always look forward to: the Cape Cod Baseball League. It's arguably the top summer collegiate baseball league in America, the games are free to attend, and they have staggered start times (varying from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays). Compared to Fenway Park, the concessions are far cheaper, getting to the parks is easier, and there far fewer obnoxious drunks starting trouble at the ballpark. Unfortunately, unlike other baseball seasons that begin this month, the Cape Cod League season is still a few months away.