Broken Promises

BY KEVIN KERNAN

In the end, when you cut through all the mistakes made since 2020, and the broken promises, the Ivy League Red Sox have been plain old baseball dumb.

John Henry’s team has outsmarted themselves time and time again.

Now the Red Sox did just beat the Yankees two in a row, scoring 21 runs in the process at Yankee Stadium. Maybe they figured something out, but they remain 8.5 games back of the Yankees, who have flaws of their own, but the Yankees have first-place flaws. The Red Sox are in fourth place.

Back in 2004 when Theo Epstein & Company were breaking the Curse of the Bambino, future Red Sox baseball boss Chaim Bloom – the man who traded Mookie Betts for nothing, the second-worst trade in Red Sox history – was graduating from Yale University with a degree in Latin Classics.

Not Baseball Classics, Latin Classics.

Theo graduated from Yale in 1999 with a degree in American Studies and was sports editor of the Yale Daily News. I knew Theo from his early days in San Diego when he started as an assistant in public relations, then moved up the baseball ladder thanks to Padres president Larry Lucchino, who took him to Boston.

When Theo got to the Padres scouting department, the late, great Kevin Towers took him under his wing and taught him some valuable baseball lessons, stuff he did not learn at Yale. The point is Theo learned from a baseball man.

Breslow went on to spend 12 years in the majors as a relief pitcher and was tabbed by sportswriters as the “smartest man in baseball.’’

Two years before the Curse was broken, current Red Sox baseball boss Craig Breslow, graduated from Yale with a degree in molecular biophysics and biochemistry. Breslow went on to spend 12 years in the majors as a relief pitcher and was tabbed by sportswriters as the “smartest man in baseball.’’

They were clearing a path for him to jump right into a front office job.

Good old American Studies paid off in championships.

Latin Classics set the wheels in motion for a Red Sox collapse.

Molecular biophysics and biochemistry have helped create the current over-analytical Red Sox team that has been lost on the field; and ironically, Breslow, the former pitcher, has put together an expensive group of starters who somehow managed to produce a 7.06 first inning ERA heading into the weekend at Yankee Stadium.

Overall, the Red Sox starters post a 4.58 ERA, 24th in the majors. The Mets lead the league with a starters’ ERA of 2.85.

Breslow gave the keys to the Fenway kingdom to Driveline Baseball, and according to a most glowing feature on Driveline this past January in the Boston Globe, which, like the Red Sox, is owned by John Henry: “The Red Sox have hired nine people from Driveline, including Boddy, who is entering his second season as a special advisor to chief baseball officer Craig Breslow.’’

That Boddy is Kyle Boddy, founder of Driveline. In the article, Boddy stated that Driveline is “the best data-driven player development system in the world, in any sport.’’

Breslow also hired Sportsology Group to conduct an internal audit of all baseball operations employees, The Athletic reported.

The Red Sox last won a World Series in 2018 under longtime baseball man Dave Dombrowski. After the Breslow-ordered audit, there were firings and some of the people who helped the Dombrowski Red Sox win the championship had their salaries cut and soon left the organization as well. The irony here is that the amateur scouting department was hit the hardest … yet the Red Sox are constantly praising prospects like Roman Anthony, Marcelo Meyer and Kristian Campbell as well as catcher Kyle Teel, who was traded in the deal to the White Sox to land Garrett Crochet. All those young players were acquired via that scouting department that did not do well in Breslow’s audit with the staff dropping from 34 to 22. Eventually four new “scouts’’ were hired to bring the amateur scouting department up to 26, but I’m sure none of the new scouts were Clint Eastwood “Trouble with the Curve’’ type scouts.

Amateur scouting director Mike Rikard – highly regarded in baseball – who went on to become VP of scouting for the Red Sox, got caught in the Sportsology tsunami and went to the Diamondbacks. He played a role in drafting the players mentioned above and also players like Jarren Duran and Triston Casas.

And, by the way, Roman Anthony, who is tearing up AAA, blasted a 497-foot grand slam on Saturday night as Red Sox fans eagerly await his arrival in Fenway.

Hey, this is baseball, and we all knew the Breslow Broom would sweep clean because you must have more and more analytics and fewer and fewer baseball people in today’s game, that’s the way it works. It seems to me that as the Red Sox keep going higher and higher up the Ivy League/Driveline/Sportsology/Latin Classics/Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry ladder, the worse they get on the field when it comes to playing, you know, baseball.

When you lose 17 one-run games, like the Red Sox have managed to lose this year, a lot of little baseball things that are actually big things go wrong for that to happen.

Perhaps these Red Sox are over-caffeinated with information. I found it interesting in the Red 10-7 win over the Yankees Saturday night at Yankee Stadium, Boston produced 14 hits and eight strikeouts. Hitters were actually trying to put the ball in play and going the other way, you know, baseball things. They did some of the same things Sunday night in the 11-7 five home runs win over the Yankees and Carlos Rodon.

There are plenty of issues, including one of my pet peeves that Nerds believe anyone can pretty much play anywhere.

They don’t respect the difficulty of changing a position and that was never clearer than with youngster Kristian Campbell who is trying to stay afloat in the major leagues (he was playing at Georgia Tech just two years ago) was suddenly thrust into learning first base, too because Rafael Devers does not want to touch a glove.

“Sure kid. It’s only first base.’’

In the words of Moneyball Ron Washington learning to play first base is “incredibly hard.’’

Tell ‘em Wash.

The Red Sox lead all of baseball in errors with 58, they even have more than the Rockies.

You’ll also remember that Hall of Famer Jim Rice got into a hitting philosophy argument in spring training with someone from Breslow’s Nerd Patrol.

When it comes to being a professor of hitting, I’m going with Jim Rice.

The Red Sox defense has been consistently terrible, too, the hitters strike out way too much and up until the weekend did not produce with men in scoring position, and the starting pitching pretty much except for Garrett Crochet has been abysmal.

Everything baseball-wise has gotten so bad that Alex Cora, who managed the Red Sox to a World Series in 2018 became so frustrated this past week, he said, “We keep making the same mistakes. We’re not getting better. At one point it has to be on me.’’

In one loss to the Angels at Fenway, the Red Sox made three errors and were 1-for-13 with runners in scoring position as Cora lamented: “We missed a cutoff; they scored two. We hit the eighth hitter; we walked the ninth hitter. We didn’t execute a bunt play. We didn’t advance when we needed to.’’

I’ve known Cora since he was a player, same for his brother Joey, a baseball family. Has Alex Cora lost his way or has his ways been changed by Red Sox front office geeks?

Good question.

The focus for the Coras always has been on the little things in baseball. Just a guess here, but maybe there has been such a buy-in to technology by John Henry’s Red Sox, they are overlooking the little baseball things it takes to make a winning team and just maybe the last two games at Yankee Stadium showed them to be in attack mode at the plate and hit the ball to all fields. Line drives work, too.

And remember when the Red Sox promised to spend big money heading into 2024 with chairman Tom Werner saying the Sawx were going to go “full throttle’’ to get the team back on track? Yep, another broken promise. They did spend $120 million on a three-year deal for third baseman Alex Bregman this year but communication skills were lacking from Breslow & Co. with no one really checking in on Devers on the move and putting Cora in a bad spot, too.

Compare that to the Yankees, who smartly keep Aaron Judge in the loop or the Mets who keep Francisco Lindor abreast of off-season happenings.

Nerds don’t have to answer to anyone and when it blows up in their faces like it did with the ongoing clash between Breslow and Devers, you get comments like this from Breslow, who recently told reporters, “I think a lot of that is nuanced, and probably best to stay between Raffy and Alex and me. But the conversation is productive.’’

Yeah, right, on May 8th after Triston Casas went down for the year with an injury, Raffy was pretty clear where he stood on playing first base, telling Breslow to stuff it. Nothing nuanced there.

Perhaps a course in communication skills would have been worth it way back when at Yale.

Sometimes, you can’t see the forest through the technology. Put the iPad down for a bit and all the metrics and start focusing on people.

There is too much trickery over deliverance. Just pitch. Just hit. Just field. Challenge hitters like young Yankee hater Hunter Dobbins did Sunday night. Yes, he surrendered two home runs, one to Judge, but he didn’t walk anyone over five innings. That’s progress.

Breslow also offered up this dandy in his press conference.

“The simple answer is it’s not good enough,’’ Breslow said of the rotten record. “It’s not the performance we expected in the offseason. I think we could point to a number of things. We haven’t really been able to sync up offense and defense. We have been sloppy in the field at times. We’ve run into mistakes on the bases.’’

No S— Sherlock.

I might have followed that up with this question: “Yeah, but why is this happening and what exactly are you doing to fix it? And why does your team have more strikeouts than any other team in baseball, other than the Rockies?”

The Red Sox are 8 1/2 back. There is no time for nuance.