How the Red Sox Got Their Groove Back

Not long before he left the Sox in October 2005, Epstein joked that the team famous for its high-wire playoff victories didn’t even start trying until it was down 0–2 in a series. According to a number of people with the club, during this past off-season the front office was gripped by some of the same resolute determination that comes when you’re staring elimination in the face…except this time elimination wasn’t a loss in the playoffs, it was the threat of fan rebellion.

Perhaps that’s why the team’s recent moves once again feel more like they’re coming from mission control than the morgue. This year’s full-court press on Daisuke Matsuzaka was more than a little reminiscent of 2003’s Thanksgiving wooing of Schilling, when Lucchino flew out to Arizona to illustrate the extent to which the organization could roll out the red carpet for marquee players, and Epstein and assistant GM Jed Hoyer sealed the
deal with presentations that showed Schilling exactly what the Sox could accomplish.

But even with the team clicking on at least most, if not all, of its cylinders, there are, this being Boston, observers who are questioning its recent decisions. Indeed, when you add up the numbers, the Red Sox’s off-season spending amounts to a spree that would make a 24-year-old Wall Street millionaire set loose in a high-class skin joint blush. The Sox, after all, spent $209 million on just three players: Matsuzaka, J. D. Drew, and Julio Lugo. That’s $130 million more than the total off-season spending of the next highest American League team, and more than any club in baseball save for the Cubs and the Giants.

Considering that Drew and Lugo both turned 31 shortly after last season ended, and that Drew, as everyone from Bangor to Bristol now knows, is an injury-prone player with a reputation for being both diffident and soft, one way to interpret the team’s sudden spending is that Theo and his lieutenants in the Sox’s baseball ops crew have realized that in the hothouse atmosphere that defines baseball in Boston, there are times when you sure as hell better go all-in lest the locals turn truly nasty. But baseball, much like life, is never as cut and dried as we’d like, and it’d be wrong to look at the 2007 Red Sox and see a wholesale shift in philosophy on Theo Epstein’s or John Henry’s or Larry Lucchino’s or anyone else’s part. Epstein never wanted to turn the Sox into the East Coast version of the cash-strapped Oakland A’s; he wanted to hold on to the team’s up-and-comers expressly so the club could lay out the big bucks when high-impact free agents were available. (With baseball’s revenue-sharing program allowing even small-market teams to open their wallets, those difference-makers that do hit the open market are more expensive than ever.)