Feeding the Monster

by Seth Mnookin

  In the years since John Henry and Tom Werner had bought the Red Sox in 2002, the team had made remarkably few missteps. The new owners quickly overcame the skepticism and distrust of the local media and were embraced by the fans. They ushered the Red Sox to the playoffs for three straight years for the first time in team history, and brought a World Series title to Boston for the first time in 86 years. For a while, it seemed as if they could do no wrong.

  Then, in one cataclysmic two-month span, the Red Sox lost their lionized general manager due to interoffice dysfunction, traded away two top prospects for a possibly injured pitcher, and appeared flatfooted as their most recognizable star waltzed off to join their hated rival. To the Boston media, this was an occasion for a paroxysm of overheated coverage. Smooth-running success was compelling for only so long. In the winter of 2005 and 2006, reporter after reporter remarked excitedly, the Henry-Werner Red Sox took on the ugly, unpredictable, and endlessly entertaining sheen of teams from years gone by.

  “We had a very good year last year,” Tom Werner said on January 20 as he ate breakfast in the living room of his apartment overlooking Boston Common. “Because of the regrettable manner in which the Theo decision was made—and I think everybody admitted that they made some mistakes—our standing has taken a big hit…but we’ve taken more bashing than is warranted. OK, so we went on a general manager search, but we’ve come to a very clean conclusion at the end of it. Even this recent period has come to, hopefully, a positive ending.”

  The narrative of the Red Sox’s 2004 World Series win begins with the appointment of Theo Epstein as the team’s general manager in the winter of 2002 and ends with their loss to the Chicago White Sox in the first round of the 2005 playoffs, an almost three-year stretch in which the Red Sox became the biggest news story in Boston’s history. The events of those years forever altered the core identity of the club. The desperate, yearning edge that had been associated with the team for so long disappeared. The devotional aspect of being a Red Sox fan dissolved, the sense of purpose and the promise of redemption implicit in each new season was no more.

  Larry Lucchino realized the challenges this transformation would create sooner than most. In the short term, the team’s world championship brought more fans and the Red Sox became more popular than at any point in their history. Even if Fenway in 2005 rarely felt as electric as it did in ’03 and ’04, the Red Sox remained the hottest ticket in town. It was Lucchino who intuitively recognized that without a larger-than-life storyline binding fans to the team, the Sox would have to work even harder to hold onto New England’s attention in the future. A couple of middling seasons would no longer serve as further proof of the Red Sox’s Sisyphian fate; instead, they’d likely transform the team into nothing more than another mediocre ball club fighting for people’s already sparse time and attention and money. Everything from the team’s exhausting World Series trophy tour to Lucchino’s fretful desire to see the Red Sox remain an elite team in the years immediately following the 2004 championship were part of his efforts to make sure the Red Sox did not crash and burn after soaring so high.

  What Lucchino didn’t realize was that while he was aggressively pushing for more, 2005 was, as John Henry says, a “hangover year” for much of the rest of the organization. “You’ve been focusing on something, you accomplish your goal, and you say, ‘Now what?’…Human beings really thrive when they have a cause or a goal regarding something larger than themselves,” Henry says. And if one of Lucchino’s biggest strengths as a CEO is his inability to rest on his laurels, his most glaring weakness is the sense of unease he instills in many of the people who serve underneath him. When the Red Sox were united in their effort to win a World Series, Lucchino’s management style wasn’t an overriding concern. After the Red Sox had won and Lucchino appeared to be the dominant personality at the head of the organization, it became more of an issue.

  Lucchino is as dedicated to Edward Bennett Williams’s philosophy of “contest living” as ever, and the combative edge that transforms so many of his daily interactions into inimical negotiations remains—a lifetime’s worth of habits cannot, after all, be shorn away in a couple of months. But even Lucchino seems to have a new appreciation that more is not always better. “I realized [after 2005] that we need to slow down,” he says. In the offseason, Lucchino usually comes up with new ways for the Red Sox to promote their brand or new business ventures the organization can embark on. This year he did the opposite, drawing up an “86 list,” named for the shorthand restaurants use when a dish is no longer available. “We’re going to 86 the players’ picnic in Fenway in September,” says Lucchino. “We’re going to 86 excess [Red Sox] Foundation events…. They’re small things, but they all get to the big picture, which is that we’re first and foremost a baseball team and we’ve got to sort of keep our eyes on the prize.”

  Cataclysmic events can cause great destruction or fundamental change, and for the last several months of 2005, it looked as if the aftershocks of winning the World Series had wreaked havoc on the Red Sox. Theo Epstein’s departure and the roiling drama that preceded his return threw the organization into a frenzied panic, and the Boston media, smelling blood in the water, dove in for the kill. Now Epstein has returned, and there’s a sense throughout the organization that a new narrative is emerging both on and off the field.

  The Red Sox teams of 2003, 2004, and 2005 featured historic offenses that will be fully appreciated only with the passage of time. For three years in a row, the Red Sox led all of baseball in runs scored. They averaged 940 runs a year during a span in which only one other team managed to top 900 runs even once* and averaged 5.80 runs per game while the rest of baseball was scoring at a rate of just 4.69 runs a night.

  By early 2006, many of the players on these teams had been replaced. The Red Sox had plugged their holes in center field and shortstop, completing deals Epstein, Cherington, and Hoyer had been working on for weeks. They replaced Johnny Damon by trading Andy Marte, Guillermo Mota, and minor league catcher Kelly Shoppach to the Indians for Coco Crisp, reliever David Riske, and catcher Josh Bard, and signed former Marlins shortstop Alex Gonzalez to a one-year deal worth $3 million.

  While the starting players that remain from the previous years—Trot Nixon, David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez, and Jason Varitek—are still offensive threats, they’re all on the wrong side of 30, and outside of Ortiz, none is likely to duplicate his recent performances. The team’s newly acquired starters, from Gonzalez to second baseman Mark Loretta and third baseman Mike Lowell, are known more for their defensive prowess. Even Crisp, whom the Red Sox hope will come close to duplicating Johnny Damon’s offensive production, is well known for his range in the outfield.

  This is no accident. For several years, the team’s baseball operations crew has been searching for new ways in which to understand and analyze players’ defensive contributions, and have oftentimes used their own data instead of relying on that provided by either Major League Baseball or Stats, Inc., the main third-party statistics clearinghouse.* “Eventually, there will be a new way to measure defensive value,” says Epstein. “We need to first find a new way of thinking about it, a new paradigm shift.”

  The 2006 Red Sox have a chance at being one of the best-fielding teams Boston has ever produced.† They will also, much to Epstein’s delight, be a more poised and professional group of ballplayers. The personality of this year’s team will likely bear little resemblance to the Cowboy Up, Idiot, Fuck ’Em All Red Sox that held Boston in thrall. What’s more, the Sox, at the end of what was supposed to be a lost offseason, look exceedingly well positioned for the future. After devising four different methods of ranking teams’ minor league nonpitching prospects and averaging the results, Bill James concluded the Sox had the 10th best minor league system in baseball even after trading hotshot prospects Hanley Ramirez and Andy Marte. “We are,” as James wrote in a 30-page report he delivered to the team in early 2006, “doing fairly well.” And the Red Sox have plenty o
f money to sign up free agents in the years to come. In 2009 and 2010, years in which the Yankees have more than $120 million in contract commitments, the Red Sox are on the hook for just $31 million.*

  Behind the scenes, Theo Epstein and Larry Lucchino found their working relationship, while not necessarily harmonious, was better than it had been at any point since 2003. Not long after Epstein’s return, Lucchino suggested that, in order to cut down on confusion, Epstein should be the person from whom the media got their information about the team’s baseball operations, and the general manager began parceling out news as he saw fit instead of eagerly feeding the baseball press’s always voracious appetite.† Epstein made a commitment to integrate his staff more with the rest of the organization, and both men realized they had allowed several years’ worth of resentments and unspoken recriminations to fester unnecessarily.

  “You know how it is in relationships,” says Henry. “You refuse to say something to your wife or girlfriend, and it builds up until you finally talk about it. So we had some things build up, and now that we’ve gotten them out, it’s much better. It’s good.”

  At the beginning of spring training in 2006, John Henry and Tom Werner were talking about one of Werner’s nascent television projects called Twenty Years. The show focuses on two older men—Werner wants Danny DeVito and John Lithgow—who realize they have approximately 20 good years left and spend each episode deciding how they want to spend that time. Henry says he and Werner could not help but see the parallels to their own lives. “Tom and I have been having conversations over the last several weeks,” he says, “and we’ve realized again how much we love what we’re doing. And how we’re lucky.

  “The World Series, that was just the beginning. You know how hectic that beginning was. We had no idea. It’s sort of like when you’re expecting a baby. You have the baby and it’s a great moment, and you take pictures and look back at it and show all your friends. That’s what you focus on: the moment you had the baby. But that’s nothing. You wake up 10 months later and you have a small child. And 10 years later…who knows what’s in store?”

  *Combined, the 30 Major League Baseball teams scored more than 900 runs in a season four times in 2003, 2004, and 2005, meaning four out of 90 teams scored more than 900 runs: the 2003 Boston Red Sox (961), the 2004 Boston Red Sox (949), the 2005 Boston Red Sox (910), and the 2003 Atlanta Braves (907).

  *Unlike offense or pitching, fielding statistics are maddeningly imprecise. Both fielding percentage (the percentage of plays a fielder makes without committing an error) and range factor (a measure of how many plays a fielder is involved in per game, compared to other players at his position) are dependent on a number of circumstances outside a player’s control. Zone rating, a measure of the percentage of the balls a fielder reaches in a prescribed zone of the field, is enormously dependent on observers’ analyses, and these observers—sometimes poorly trained college kids—can spit out bad information. Since teams almost never gather their own defensive statistics, faulty defensive data can lead to trades that might otherwise have worked out differently. Before the 2005 season, the Oakland A’s traded pitcher Tim Hudson to the Atlanta Braves for minor league left fielder Charles Thomas and pitchers Dan Meyer and Juan Cruz. The A’s viewed Thomas, who had a reputation for being a defensive whiz in left, as a prize catch. In fact, Thomas’s defensive numbers were vastly inflated because of improper zone rating calculations. Bad data can skew even the most sophisticated analyses. For example, John Dewan’s The Fielding Bible, published in 2006, is a fascinating addition to the study of defensive prowess; however, some baseball executives feel some of the data Dewan used were collected improperly.

  †In addition to Lowell, a Gold Glove winner in 2005, and Gonzalez, considered one of the best defensive shortstops in baseball, the Red Sox added J. T. Snow as a backup first basemen. From 1995 through 2000, Snow won six straight Gold Glove awards.

  *In 2008, the Sox have committed $48 million to five players: $20 million to Manny Ramirez, $12.5 million to David Ortiz, $10 million to Jason Varitek, $4.75 million to Coco Crisp, and $700,000 to reliever Craig Hansen. That year, the Yankees have $111 million in salary commitments divided among seven players. In 2009, the Yankees have $73 million committed to four players, all of whom will be 34 or older by the end of the year, and in 2010, the Yankees have $48 million committed to Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter alone, who will turn 35 and 36, respectively, during the season. In 2009, the Sox will owe Ortiz, who will be 34 at the end of the year, $12.5 million, and Crisp, who will be 30, $5.75 million. For 2010, the only player the Sox have under contract is Ortiz, at $12.5 million.

  †Epstein has often professed admiration for the Bill Belichick–led New England Patriots, who seem to treat even the most benign information as being available on a need-to-know basis. The media, needless to say, doesn’t need to know much of anything in Belichick’s view.

  Epilogue

  ON APRIL 10, 2006, the Red Sox announced they had signed David Ortiz to a four-year, $52 million extension that would keep the slugging designated hitter in Boston through 2010. The deal made official what everyone already knew: Ortiz, in his three years with the team, had become the face of the franchise. Since joining the Red Sox, Ortiz had 120 home runs, and his 392 RBIs were tops in the majors over that span. He’d collected 13 walk-off hits, eight of which were game-ending homers, and was the only person in history with more than two postseason walk-off hits to his name, as well as the only player with more than one in a single year.

  At the press conference announcing the deal, Ortiz, clutching an unlit cigar and sporting a black fedora and a pair of gaudy diamond earrings, told reporters he signed the extension because of his commitment to Boston. “This is my house,” he said of Fenway. “I’ve got to protect this house.” With his father watching from the back of the room, Ortiz went on. “This is not all about David Ortiz. This is about the group of guys that play together day by day. Whenever something happens to any of these guys, the whole [Red Sox] Nation feels that. I can feel that. I can see that…. I’m pretty sure New England is going to take this as the good news. I want to finish my career as a Red Sox player.” John Henry, Tom Werner, Larry Lucchino, and Theo Epstein flanked Ortiz on the podium, and their mood was appropriately upbeat. The Sox, at 5-1, were tied for the best record in baseball. An ambitious set of offseason improvements to Fenway had been completed to glorious effect, as Lucchino and architect Janet Marie Smith worked their ballpark magic once again. The glass in front of the luxury club behind home plate had been removed, and a two-tiered, open-air section was put in its place. Elsewhere, the concourses were widened, new bathrooms were built, and concession stands were added.

  In many ways, the rest of the organization felt as rejuvenated as Fenway Park. A year before, the Sox had opened the season with an aging lineup, tension festering in the front office, and players and staffers alike worn out from the exhausting effects of Boston’s first World Series celebration in 86 years. By Opening Day in 2006, only nine out of 25 players—Keith Foulke, Trot Nixon, David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez, Curt Schilling, Mike Timlin, Jason Varitek, Tim Wakefield, and Kevin Youkilis—remained from the team’s 2004 World Series roster. Lucchino and Epstein were working together more closely and seamlessly than they had in years, and the team’s new strategy of keeping their planned moves out of the press seemed to be working: When, on April 12, the Sox announced they’d signed Coco Crisp to a three-year contract extension, the news caught Boston sportswriters by surprise.

  In the first month of the season, even as the Sox tinkered with their roster and dealt with an injury to Crisp that would keep him out of the lineup until mid-May, the team was buoyed by the rebirth of Schilling as an elite starter and the emergence of Jonathan Papelbon as a dominant closer. Schilling started the year 4-1 and led the league with 40 strikeouts in April, while Papelbon set a rookie record with 10 saves while putting up a 0.00 ERA and striking out 14 in 13 appearances. On May 1, the Yankees traveled to Bost
on for the first Red Sox–Yankees game of the year. The intensity of the rivalry was undiminished, but the storylines had clearly changed. Johnny Damon was booed lustily during every one of his at-bats, and it was Mark Loretta who provided the game-winning RBI for the Red Sox in the bottom of the eighth inning. In the top of the ninth, Papelbon retired the side to seal the victory. The young right-hander hadn’t let up a run since September 2005, and he opened the inning by blowing away Alex Rodriguez on three pitches. “I knew in the bullpen I was coming in to face him,” Papelbon, who’d warmed to his role as one of the public faces of the Sox, said later. “I wanted to set the tone.” John Henry, Tom Werner, Larry Lucchino, and Theo Epstein hoped Papelbon and his teammates on these new-look Red Sox would be setting just such a tone for years to come.

  A Note on Sources

  and Methodology

  I’ve been a Red Sox fan since 1977, when my family moved to the Boston suburb of Newton. I was at Fenway on October 2, 1983, for Carl Yastrzemski’s final game, and sank into a depression following Boston’s Game 6 loss to the Mets in the 1986 World Series. My mom used to clip out box scores and standings from the Globe and send them to me at summer camp. I was sitting in the upper deck of Yankee Stadium on September 10, 1999, when Pedro had 17 strikeouts in a complete game one-hitter, and sank into another depression after the Sox’s Game 7 loss to the Yankees in 2003. After following the team for 27 years, I finally succeeded in finding a way to combine my love for the team with my work life when, in the fall of 2004, I wangled an assignment from Vanity Fair to cover the team’s playoff run. It was the chance of a lifetime.