Red Sox

Jed Hoyer with the Cubs, Ben Cherington with the Pirates, and perhaps Bloom with the Cardinals? Look at the National League Central, vying for our affections all of a sudden.

COMMENTARY

Sunday’s Red Sox-Cardinals broadcast went heavy on the history, as the streamers often do. Four World Series, including the only repeat pairing (2004, 2013) in the 21st century . . . it was fine.

Can’t blame them. The recent meetings between the teams haven’t exactly been marquee.

Last May, St. Louis came to Fenway with the worst record in the National League, then promptly swept what was then still a pleasant surprise Red Sox team. This year, Boston was the better team at .500, then allowed one of the National League’s worst offenses to score in seven separate innings Friday and post five in the eighth on Saturday.

The Red Sox at last got theirs against a ‘B’ lineup Sunday, five hits with runners in scoring position equaling their total in the four-game losing streak. Their two-run rally in the fourth including a 150-foot Jarren Duran triple, and the three runs in the fifth came via a Wilyer Abreu single too slow for the Mass Pike and a Dom Smith bloop, in his own words, “I couldn’t have thrown . . . to a better spot.”

Back to St. Petersburg the Red Sox go, the losers of 11 of 16 trying to break that run in a place they’ve lost 15 of 17 games since the start of the 2022 season.

Better to look back for a few thoughts, I think.

Chaim’s new home

There was plenty of talk about Tyler O’Neill’s reunion with his old club, the outfielder — acquired from the Cardinals this winter — getting standing ovations before his first at-bat in all three games. He gushed about Boston, and opened up about how done he was with St. Louis after an arbitration fight in 2022 and manager Oli Marmol questioning his effort in 2023.

The Red Sox facing the team now employing Chaim Bloom got far less attention. The Cardinals were the landing spot for the former Red Sox chief baseball officer in January, hired as an adviser to longtime president of baseball operations John Mozeliak.

“It will be good to get an outside perspective of our organization from someone who is as well-respected as Chaim,” Mozeliak said in a statement at the time of the hire. “Having a fresh set of eyes on all aspects of our baseball operations should be helpful.”

Four months later, St. Louis is again struggling, and Mozeliak — the team’s general manager since October 2007 — just told a St. Louis TV station that “I get the sense the city is tiring of me . . . and the vocal minority is getting louder and louder.”

Mozeliak’s contract is up after the 2025 season. St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Ben Frederickson made the connection before the Red Sox visit, noting Mozeliak “has suggested publicly that he will be ready to pass the baton” and that Bloom’s background study of the organization “doesn’t seem like the kind of onboarding process enacted for someone ownership expects to be a short-timer.”

Jed Hoyer with the Cubs, Ben Cherington with the Pirates, and perhaps Bloom with the Cardinals? Look at the National League Central, vying for our affections all of a sudden.

About staying home

Cardinals chairman Bill Dewitt Jr. was eager to snap up Bloom after the Red Sox fired him, noting to reporters, “Our team has been together a long time, and you never know what else is out there that maybe our guys have not been in touch with. The world changes.”

It sure does, as his son then reminded earlier this month.

In a podcast conversation with St. Louis TV fixture Martin Kilcoyne, Cardinals president Bill Dewitt III was asked about ticket sales and outside interest in the face of a last-place finish in 2023 — the Cards’ first since 1990, and their first sub-.500 season since 2007.

His answer was wide-ranging, and came with the undertone of the team’s looming request for another bucket of public money. Much of it sounded a lot like the things heard around here this winter, though, and the part that really struck me most came near the end.

“The thing I chuckle about is when I see sometimes comments, ‘We gotta, you know, not show up to send a message that this isn’t acceptable’ to the owners,” Dewitt said. “I find that one somewhat illogical reasoning because, you know, we just turn this revenue machine into a payroll machine. I mean, that’s what this is, this business. I mean, we try to drive as much revenue as we can, and then it gets put on the field for the most part.”

It is, essentially, the ol’ beatings will continue until morale improves. Pay for this subpar product, or we’ll really show you how bad it can get!

From another big-market club with established ownership facing some unhappy fans, though one whose payroll has essentially held just outside the league’s top 10 for decades.

There’s logic in its face, the idea that teams that bring in the most money will then have the most money to spend on players. It falls apart when you remember every team in the league is valued (by Sportico) at in excess of a billion dollars, and that the average team is worth $2.64B.

It’s a simplistic view, but MLB teams, again according to Sportico, only derive on average about 40 percent of their revenues from tickets, concessions, and the like. The rest is national and local revenues through TV deals, sponsorships, et cetera.

Simply put, every team can find a reason to spend if they choose to, and they can find one not to just the same.

One other nugget? Dewitt noted that roughly, “Your ranking in revenue translates into your ranking in payroll.” According to Forbes, the Red Sox were fourth in revenue in 2023, a season in which their payroll was (and remains) outside the top 10.

Devers and the homers

O’Neill marveled to reporters Sunday about Rafael Devers, who homered for the fifth straight game in the sixth inning.

“It’s fun to watch, isn’t it? When that guy gets on a heater, it’s fun to watch,” he said.

No doubt. Devers, who had four-game homer streaks in both 2021 and 2022, made the club with five a septet, the first to do it since Bobby Dalbec hit five straight in games 6-10 of his MLB career.

There’s a strangeness to it, though. For one, Boston had lost the first four games of it prior to Sunday, and Devers had a hand in that. He was just 1 for 5 with two walks with runners on during the five games before his two-run shot off former Red Sox farmhand Ryan Fernandez.

Devers has been well below league average this season with runners in scoring position, with a .176/.317/.412 line and strikeouts in 34 percent of his plate appearances. With the bases empty, he’s far better — .296/.390/.563, with 24.4 percent strikeouts.

He is walking at a far higher rate in scoring opportunities, the sample remains small, and he’s a better career hitter with men in scoring position — .903 OPS vs. .844. But Will Middlebrooks felt the weirdness Sunday as well.

“Over this hitting streak, it’s not like he’s been white hot and just getting two or three knocks every night,” he said. “He’s having good at-bats, [but] he’s still getting out. But you give him that one mistake, he’s not missing it.”

Devers has one other hit, a single, during the five-game homer run, and is just 11 for 37 (.297) in his nine-game hitting streak. When Williams homered in five straight in July 1957, he went 8 for 11 with seven walks. For the month, he hit .441, on his way to .388 with 38 home runs.

Real incisive criticism that Rafael Devers isn’t Ted Williams, right? Merely a note, as Boston heads to its house of horrors with a chance to do something positive in the division, that needing help from everywhere starts with help coming from the top.