Time for the Red Sox to deliver on their promises after another playoff-less season

Maybe this is finally the tipping point.

Maybe, after three years out of the playoffs and a six-season span of overall mediocrity, the Red Sox finally understand how much they’ve eroded public trust since their last World Series championship.

We can only hope.

Monday afternoon’s press conference at Fenway Park wasn’t in advance of a game played with greater stakes. It didn’t come in the wake of those frequent champagne celebrations we enjoyed starting with a 2004 breakthrough and running through arguably the greatest team in franchise history in 2018.

No, this was another gathering of team president and CEO Sam Kennedy, chief baseball officer Craig Breslow and manager Alex Cora addressing what went wrong — and promising to be better. We’ve grown sadly used to this since a surprise run to the American League Championship Series in 2021.

“There was a feeling this year — particularly [on Sunday] in the ballpark — that we don’t want this to end,” Kennedy said one day after the 2024 season came to a close with a 3-1 win over the Rays. “This has been, in a lot of ways, a season of what could have been. So we need to do more.”

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Boston finished 81-81, an even .500 — the most average, most mediocre record you could request. They’re just four games over that mark in the regular season since winning 108 games and storming to a final out at Dodger Stadium, an ideal California night that grows further in the distance with each passing day. Declining attendance and NESN ratings, a dearth of star power on the current roster, the Yankees and Orioles clearly surpassing them in the A.L. East — the Red Sox have much to remedy over these next four months to be taken seriously again when spring training convenes in February.

“We asked our fans to sacrifice a lot — to be patient — as we built the foundation that would enable us to reach those goals,” Breslow said. “I think we’re here. I think we’re ready to deliver.”

Commitment starts at the top, and principal owner John Henry has been unwilling to invest as he once did. Per Cot's Contracts, Boston finished outside the sport’s top five in Opening Day 26-man roster payroll just once from 2000-2020. The club has ranked eighth, sixth, 12th and 12th over the last four years. The Red Sox have been outbid for free agents high and low, from the monster contract Yoshinobu Yamamoto landed with Los Angeles to the smaller deal Seth Lugo signed to become a mainstay of an eventual playoff rotation with the Royals.

“We see it as a competitive advantage in the American League East to not tip our hands to our competitors,” Kennedy said. “That said, the feeling is our fans have been through a lot. They’ve been patient.”

Breslow’s predecessor, new St. Louis Cardinals top executive Chaim Bloom, was given a directive to rebuild a depleted farm system. The retention and development of Roman Anthony, Marcelo Mayer, Kristian Campbell and Kyle Teel would suggest that goal has been achieved. Now is the ideal time — with only Mayer facing some question marks due to injury — for Breslow to balance his roster by trading veterans blocking them or using them as chips to add players with already proven track records in the big leagues.

“I think at this point everything has to be on the table,” Breslow said. “To position ourselves otherwise could potentially eliminate a possibility. The reality is often times values don’t match up where it makes sense to trade someone who we believe is going to be a superstar here for a really long time.”

Boston’s infield defense will get only so much better if Triston Casas and Rafael Devers remain at the corners. Campbell is the only right-handed hitter among the elite prospect group — the Red Sox have a logjam of left-handers that includes Casas, Devers, Anthony, Mayer, Teel, Jarren Duran, Wilyer Abreu and Masataka Yoshida. Boston could solve multiple problems at once by targeting pitching help elsewhere and moving current pieces to bring it in.

Tanner Houck, Brayan Bello and Kutter Crawford are organizational success stories for a revamped infrastructure headed by Breslow and director of pitching Justin Willard. But it’s a long bridge to suggest any of those three could further develop into the equivalent of Pedro Martinez and Curt Schilling in 2004, Josh Beckett in 2007, Jon Lester in 2013 or the 2018 staff — Chris Sale, David Price, Rick Porcello, Eduardo Rodriguez and Nathan Eovaldi would all be preferred playoff starters to anyone currently here. The bullpen will also be in major need of depth and refurbishing with Kenley Jansen and Chris Martin bound for free agency and no other reliever cracking 65 strikeouts.

“I think where we’re going is going to be fun,” Cora said. “I’ve been saying it all along the last two weeks to the people who are here most of the time — I truly believe this is the last struggle.”

They said all the right things. They looked comfortable and assured — a long way from the mood after Cora’s one-year departure prior to 2020 or the public appearances that followed trading Mookie Betts to the Dodgers. Will this be the next time the Red Sox deliver on their promises?

Actions, as always, will speak loudest.

bkoch@providencejournal.com

On X: @BillKoch25

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Time for the Red Sox to deliver on their promises after another playoff-less season