Going Deep

Back-to-back disappointing seasons will make any leader question their organization’s process. Red Sox principal owner John Henry did just that and revealed he felt the club had “perhaps overly relied on numbers” when making roster decisions of late. To those who still think jokes about Carmine – the Red Sox’s statistical database developed under Theo Epstein and Ben Cherington – are funny, Henry’s words likely rang true and signaled the beginning of a much needed change in philosophy. To those who appreciate what an analytical approach to the game can help bring (e.g., three World Series rings in ten years), the comments sounded like a search to assign blame and, perhaps, an over-reaction to last year’s disappointment. In any case, Alex Speier of The Boston Globe notes that the team is not retreating from statistical analysis. Rather it is actually committing more money to its analytics department but will incorporate a different approach in how that information is weighed when making decisions. That sounds like a perfectly reasonable approach and probably didn’t necessitate the media firestorm that resulted in the wake of Henry’s comments. Sure, Dave Dombrowski is known to prefer a greater emphasis on scouting and player development than on statistical analysis. That’s fine. But finding the ideal (and clearly elusive) balance between the two could lead to another prolonged period of success in Boston.

The second season of the hit show Find Hanley Ramirez a Defensive Position has started. This season Hanley tackles first base, though to some his move back to the infield arguably comes with more risk than his transition to left field in 2015. Dustin Pedroia reminded Hanley of just how important first base is in an ever so Pedroia way. Hanley has a lot to learn about the nuances of his new position, with limited time to do so. Regardless, Jason Mastrodonato of BostonHerald.com reports that the team is focusing on slow, simple, incremental progress. Red Sox third base and infield coach Brian Butterfield is the man in charge of transforming Hanley into a competent first baseman. The pace of Butterfield’s instruction has been planned with a keen awareness of the concerns over Ramirez’s health. Hanley is coming off a shoulder injury in 2015 that sapped his power at the plate, so the coaching staff is doing their best to avoid re-aggravating it. Despite these precautions, P.J. Wright of Boston.com writes that Pedroia is confident Hanley can make the transition to first base successfully. If he doesn’t the Red Sox have alternative options in Travis Shaw, prospect Sam Travis, and even (gasp!) Allen Craig, although fitting all the pieces of the puzzle together could prove difficult.

Quick Hits

On Monday, the Red Sox agreed to a minor-league contract with outfielder Daniel Murphy. As Alex Speier of The Boston Globe notes, this is a smart signing that offers the team solid depth protection against any underperformance from Jackie Bradley Jr. and/or Rusney Castillo.

Hard-throwing, high-strikeout pitchers have been a hallmark of Dave Dombrowski’s previous teams. The additions of Craig Kimbrel, Carson Smith and David Price ensure that the 2016 Red Sox will be no exception to this trend. Brian MacPherson of the Providence Journal spoke with each of these pitchers (and others) about the importance of velocity and about how correctly synchronizing pitchers’ body types with the mechanics of their deliveries helps maintain it.

Blake Swihart comes into Spring Training as the likely starting catcher, a considerable advancement on the depth chart from this time last year. This role requires him to take charge of the pitching staff, working as an on-field coach of sorts. Peter Abraham of The Boston Globe writes that Swihart had always done well with this aspect of his position in the minor leagues, but had difficulty with it following his early promotion to Boston last season. Swihart’s comfort grew over the course of last summer, and this spring he is in camp working hard and providing insight to his battery mates.

Swihart’s catching partner Christian Vazquez is still working his way back from Tommy John surgery, making important steps forward as camp progresses. Last week, Jason Mastrodonato of BostonHerald.com noted that the Red Sox were slowing Vazquez down in order to take the long, cautious path with his rehab. Then on Monday, Vazquez had an important throwing session that, as Sean McAdam of CSNNE.com reports, went really well. With this sort of continued, methodical progress, Vazquez could start seeing action in Grapefruit League games soon enough.

The 2016 season marks changes not only on the field and in the front office but also in the Red Sox broadcast booths. Dave O’Brien is moving from radio to join the television side, replacing fan-favorite Don Orsillo. Chad Finn, writing for The Boston Globe, spoke with O’Brien about the transition, reminding Red Sox fans that, despite Orsillo’s departure, they are still in good hands.

David Ortiz is embarking on his last trip through a major league season. Due to his star status, this final campaign will involve a farewell tour of some sort. The exact nature of the Big Papi celebration remains to be seen, but at Boston.com, Chad Finn hopes the farewell tour coincides with a victory tour. Ideally, Ortiz will ride a duckboat off into the proverbial sunset.

Photo by Winslow Towson/USA Today Sports Images

Do you remember the end of the book Moneyball?

In 2002 Billy Beane’s A’s won 103 games, the same as the New York Yankees. The Yankees spent $133 million on player payroll. The A’s achieved the same result with $42 million. But the A’s didn’t win in the playoffs, so despite their success in the regular season, it was all a failure. With the season over, Beane slinks back to his office. He knows nothing is going to change and he’s going to have to scale the same impossibly steep mountain all over again. The payroll isn’t going up enough, he’s not getting a raise or a promotion. More of his best players will leave because he can’t afford to pay them. Beane’s reward is nothing. Then he gets a phone call.

The caller offers him a job, a more highly sought after job than his own; one with a raise, a promotion, a much higher payroll, and a better chance to win in the playoffs. Beane takes the job. A few days later he has a change of heart and decides to stay in Oakland with the A’s. That job he eschewed was with the Boston Red Sox. That call was from John Henry.

Beane’s brief time with the Red Sox was over, but Henry’s was just beginning. Although he didn’t get Beane, the path to success in Henry’s mind was clear. Apply the then-nascent field of baseball analytics, the very thought process that helped bring Beane success in Oakland despite their relatively minuscule payroll, to the Boston Red Sox. Build the best analytics team in baseball and the wins will surely follow.

The path to success in Henry’s mind was clear; build the best analytics team in baseball and the wins will surely follow.

Henry didn’t get Beane, so he got the next best thing: his own younger version, 28-year-old Theo Epstein. Unsurprisingly Epstein did many of the things you might have expected Beane would have done. He brought in high on-base percentage guys like Kevin Millar, Bill Mueller, Todd Walker, and David Ortiz. He fired the old school by-the-gut manager (perhaps a year late, but still) and replaced him with someone who was willing and able to incorporate the percentages into his managing. He traded prospects for ace pitcher Curt Schilling, in part by using analytics to convince him a right-handed fly-ball pitcher could thrive in Fenway Park. Oh, and he hired Bill James, the very man whose writing had inspired Beane in the first place.

That was in 2002. Jump forward 13 years and the Red Sox are three-time World Series champions. They’ve also got a meaningfully different front office for the first time since Beane received that phone call. The Red Sox have gone through two GMs in that time, but though Epstein and Ben Cherington were different people (though their voices sounded eerily similar) they both came from the same analytical-bent background, not one that entirely eschewed on-the-ground player evaluation, but one that placed the it next to analytics as equals, two required pieces to complete the championship puzzle.

But then things went awry. The Red Sox finished in last place three out of four years under Cherington, with the final indignity costing Cherington his job. You can certainly point to logical reasons why the team failed on the field and not all of those failures lead straight to bad decisions from the front office, but when Henry looked at the team’s player evaluation processes, he found a fundamental flaw. This led to perhaps the most surprising revelation of the still-young spring when earlier this week John Henry flatly stated that the team had been overly reliant on analytics, and that going forward they would be run differently.

We kind of all saw this coming with the hiring of Dave Dombrowski last season, who is known as a more traditional general manager, but to hear Henry declare it in such stark terms was striking. There is danger in becoming too wedded to any one way of player evaluation and perhaps the Red Sox front offices under Epstein and Cherington had gone too far in one direction. That’s impossible to say from the outside, even when looking at the decisions the team has made. There are just too many moving parts, from player evaluations signings, trades, drafts, and team performance, to look at any organization over a short period of time and make declarative statements about what they do well or what they do poorly. And if there is a scary part of Henry’s statement, that’s it. If the team has moved too far towards analytics, that’s fine, but the answer isn’t to overcompensate in the other direction.

That’s not to say the team won’t win with an analytic-lite philosophy, if that’s their new philosophy at all. Dombrowski has had success in the past with the Marlins and Tigers with exactly this model, building strong teams through scouting that won many games. If the goal is to build a long-term winning organization, it seems pretty clear based on the last two decades worth of data that the smart teams employ both perspectives in roughly equal measure. That isn’t to say you can’t win with just one, or even have sustained success that way, it’s that watching baseball creates perceptions. Analytics challenges those perceptions. It forces people to confront what their eyes are telling them and to explain it with logic and data. Without analytics teams can get caught in a whirlpool of their own unchallenged thoughts and expectations, and that’s a recipe for bad decisions.

Watching baseball creates perceptions. Analytics challenges those perceptions. It forces people to confront what their eyes are telling them and to explain it with logic and data.

Of course, that could happen by using analytics exclusively as well. The challenge the Red Sox face is to learn the proper amount of both and to apply them at the proper time. Perhaps Henry’s statements to the press are just statements to the press and don’t necessarily reflect the reality on the ground. Perhaps Henry thinks what he’s saying is what the fans and media want to hear. But it’s surprising that after almost a decade and a half of analytically driven baseball decision-making, a time in which the Red Sox have won three World Series championships, that Henry has decided to abruptly change course.

The Red Sox do still employ Bill James and they recently created a position for Brian Bannister to analyze pitching using, among other things, analytics, so they certainly aren’t abandoning analytics entirely. Perhaps they’re just being more selective about things. That could be good. But even if the team has indeed grown too reliant on numbers in their decision-making, the mere fact that the Red Sox are moving away from a philosophy that has led to such tremendous success on the field, even if not recently, is concerning. How concerning? As always, the answer isn’t in the results, but in the process.

That’s a quality that new President Dave Dombrowski may not share. The promotion of a GM to President no longer seems strange. It’s been four seasons since Theo Epstein left for the Cubs, yet back when gorilla suits were in style, that kind of promotion may not have been as possible, let alone normal.

It’s not that GM positions never led to “higher” positions in the organization, but for a time, it seemed to be a kind of semi-retirement. John Schuerholz took that role officially, and despite the title “special advisor,” that’s maybe what John Hart was with the Rangers, Terry Ryan with the Twins and Pat Gillick with the Phillies. Their expertise was still valued, but the increasing demands on a GM’s time were no longer a fit.

In the last five years, this “emeritus” feel is not a requirement; there’s a new kind of baseball ops-specific position above the GM position.

• Feb 2010: After nine years as GM, Mark Shapiro is elevated to President, seemingly in part as a way for the Indians to keep Chris Antonetti.
• Oct 2011: Theo Epstein is hired by the Cubs as President of Baseball Operations, with former Assistant GM Jed Hoyer brought on a week later as General Manager.
• Oct 2012: Twelve years after becoming GM of the White Sox, Kenny Williams is promoted to Executive Vice President. AGM Rick Hahn becomes GM.
• May 2014: Tony La Russa is hired for a new position with the Diamondbacks: Chief Baseball Officer. In consultation with CEO and President Derrick Hall, he gives the GM position to Dave Stewart, leading to the resignation of Kevin Towers. Another GM finalist, De Jon Watson, leaves his Vice President position with the Dodgers to become Senior Vice President of Baseball Operations with the D-backs.
• Aug 2014: Pat Gillick steps in as President of the Phillies on an interim basis, taking on the role permanently when David Montgomery returned, but as chairman.
• Oct 2014: Andrew Friedman opts out of his contract with the Rays to become President of Baseball Operations with the Dodgers. He hires Athletics AGM Farhan Zaidi as GM, and hires another considered GM candidate in Josh Byrnes as Senior Vice President of Baseball Operations.
• Apr 2015: Brian Sabean steps up from the GM position to become Executive Vice President of Baseball Operations. AGM Bobby Evans is elevated to Senior Vice President and General Manager.

Jon Daniels of the Rangers and Matt Silverman of the Rays currently head their teams’ baseball operations with a President title without a GM under them, concessions that seemed to be designed as official acknowledgements that no “Super GM” would be named above them. With respect to Daniels, Silverman and every “Super GM” on the above list… can you imagine any of them getting fired for normal baseball reasons, barring a change in ownership? For those with GMs serving under them, how many of them could survive a change in GM?

The answers you guess for those questions may be all we have. I’m sure there are similar situations from long ago, but it’s hard to come up with a recent example of a “Super GM” getting fired. Nolan Ryan getting pushed out of the Rangers hierarchy comes close, but he had not been a GM before, and unlike Tony La Russa, he had never had the chance to hire a GM, either. Maybe the closest example is current Red Sox GM candidate Dan O’Dowd, who after nearly thirteen years as GM of the Rockies saw his position get split, with O’Dowd’s AGM, Bill Geivett, named “Director of Major League Operations.” The new breed of Super GMs, the Epsteins and Friedmans, have yet to see a regime change.

It’s hard to come up with a recent example of a “Super GM” getting fired.

There’s a tension here, about what these roles actually are. Though team officials are typically allowed to interview for higher positions with other clubs, the Blue Jays have had a very difficult time filling theirs. Current GM Dan Duquette was interested, at least theoretically (who doesn’t want a promotion?) and Kenny Williams, a Super GM without a President title, also saw his connection to Toronto frustrated. Now Shapiro, a Super GM with a President title, is also a candidate. Eight months, and no traction.

Meanwhile, do you know where your Assistant General Managers are? Gone are the days of the strong #2 AGMs, maybe, replaced with a class of Milford School graduates neither seen nor heard. Some teams have none, others up to four; I’ll confess that there are very few names I recognized, beyond AGMs currently rumored as GM candidates. I follow the D-backs very closely, and yet I can’t recall seeing AGM Bryan Minniti’s name in print since his hiring — despite the fair bit of reporting on his Nationals departure two weeks earlier.

Hearing from AGMs less wouldn’t mean they were less important; the same could be said of GMs moved to Super GM roles. In the case of Dombrowski, the distinction between his new title as President of Baseball Operations and the title of General Manager either means something or it doesn’t. This is a new enough trend that I don’t think we can land one way or the other; and yet in the context of other situations around the game, I think we can draw some inferences based on either possibility.

If “President of Baseball Operations” Really Just Means “General Manager”

It’s possible that Dombrowski’s title is really just a fancy new term for GM, one that allows a big market team to spend big money to accumulate more of the game’s top front office talent. I don’t think we can dismiss as coincidence the timing of Larry Lucchino’s departure, but it wasn’t necessarily the case that someone would be named to replace him in exactly the same role. Lucchino’s relationship with baseball operations was always a little complicated, as I’m sure Epstein would confirm; baseball ops fell within Lucchino’s mandate enough for the Red Sox to try to convince O’Dowd and the Rockies that it was he who killed the Kelly Shoppach trade, and yet it was not enough of a mandate for O’Dowd to actually believe that.

It’s possible that Dombrowski’s title is really just a fancy new term for GM, one that allows a big market team to spend big money to accumulate more of the game’s top front office talent.

Lateral moves from team to team are pretty rare at baseball’s highest echelon, but the principal difference between Zaidi’s new role and his old one is probably his pay check. As President of Baseball Operations but not as GM, Dombrowski can court just about anyone, much like Mets GM Sandy Alderson was so formidable a hire that Paul DePodesta’s move there from the Padres seemed like a step up, J.P. Ricciardi could take a long term position without skipping a beat, and it was believed that Omar Minaya at least had the option of sticking around. Cherington’s exit was quicker than that of Minaya or Arizona’s Towers, but maybe only because the model is more established.

If Dombrowski is Boston’s GM in everything but name, some of the rumored or otherwise likely GM candidates probably aren’t candidates at all. Why would Yankees AGM Billy Eppler make that move? If the only likely difference is one of dollars, like with Zaidi, the Yankees could surely keep him. It also seems unlikely that Jerry Dipoto would start a new situation where his power at GM was even iffier than with Mike Scioscia’s Angels. This is how Frank Wren starts to make a lot of sense. He’s had his moment, and yet seems unlikely to take a formal AGM position in lieu of a special assistant role. Dombrowski’s title is a way to hire a guy like Wren.

But if Dombrowski’s role is likely to be similar to that of Epstein and Friedman, we could take things another step, and guess that if Wren is hired, he won’t be the only man hired. I’m not certain that Watson would have been able to interview with the D-backs for a Senior Vice President position. The Red Sox have the money and may have the desire to create a new front office supergroup. There is a definite possibility that the GM interview process could result in multiple hires.

If “President of Baseball Operations” Means More

In Robert Graves’s Claudius the God, the sequel to I, Claudius, the title character’s ascension to Emperor went very well — for a time. Graves explained Claudius’s turn for the awful as deliberate; his character thought he was doing so great a job, he might hurt the Romans in the long run by teaching them to prefer monarchy to democracy. Claudius found himself demonstrating that a great monarchy can be better than a great democracy, and that’s probably true. But he also reasoned that a bad monarchy was so much worse than a bad democracy that the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze.

We don’t know that “President of Baseball Operations” is baseball’s answer to monarchy, but we don’t know that it isn’t, either. We have yet to see a sought-after GM candidate named to such a position outlast his welcome. Of course John Henry and Tom Werner could dislodge any of their employees, and they could certainly do that with Dombrowski more easily than they could have with Lucchino, who had an ownership stake. But would they? I feel very confident that La Russa is firmly entrenched as Chief Baseball Officer, and would have remained that way as long as he is likely to stay. Some things, maybe, you just don’t do.

It’s possible that Dombrowski’s meetings with Henry and Werner brought out just that result; after all, it was the best opportunity available, says Dom, and we have no contract to review. If President of Baseball Operations offers no better job security than GM, I’m not sure I see the point.

If Dombrowski is a monarch, well then it’s possible he could be a bad one. We might end up living with it for a long time. On the plus side, we could end up with a pre-downturn Claudius, a GM all the more effective because of his job security. It really could be a good thing.

If Dombrowski has extracted some kind of enhanced job security from Henry and from Werner, who may take on more of a Lucchino role, well then the sky’s the limit. Suddenly instead of Eppler and Dipoto and others being less likely to come to Boston, they might be more likely. Dipoto may want to captain his own ship, but it may also be an issue of not wanting to help captain a ship on which the crew is uncertain of who to answer to. Dombrowski has enough cache to attract talent the way Alderson has, and just like Alderson, maybe, he could be empowered to outline his employees’ roles exactly. That could be an attractive thing.

So much could happen in the coming days that could leave an imprint on the Red Sox for a very long time. Here at this site, of course, we’ll be paying particular attention to how Dombrowski blends his previous style with a Henry-inspired analytics focus. We should expect more than one other significant hire, it seems, based on the history of other clubs that created a Super GM position for any reason other than the promotion of an AGM to GM. If there’s just one inference to draw from Dombrowski’s title, however, it’s that it could take much more than two losing seasons to end his tenure in Boston.

Photo by Winslow Towson/USA Today Sports Images

Indeed, there’s little doubt Dombrowski’s arrival signals the end of a certain chapter in club history. The Red Sox, since Theo Epstein’s rise to GM over a decade ago through Cherington’s sudden departure Tuesday, have taken a uniform approach to team-building. They’ve leaned heavily on analytics and thrown loads of resources into scouting and player development, seeking to amass in-house talent that can be supplemented with one of the league’s biggest payrolls.

In the past couple days, many have focused on Dombrowski’s track record and noted how much his approach to roster construction in Detroit differed from Boston’s traditional tactics under John Henry’s ownership. During his time with the Tigers, Dombrowski was known as a shrewd trader, and someone who aggressively dealt away prospects for major league pieces. Detroit seldom had a good farm system over the last decade, which differs mightily from a Boston organization that has frequently boasted some of the game’s best minor league talent in recent years.

In addition, many have been quick to label Dombrowski as an “old-school” executive far removed from the type of new-school thinking that Epstein and Cherington espouse. On the surface, then, Dombrowski’s arrival appeared to signal a change in philosophy for a Red Sox front office that has long been known as one of the most progressive in baseball.

Yet simply saying that Dombrowski eschews analytics entirely, and that the Red Sox will suddenly alter the strategy that has won them three World Series titles since 2004, feels a bit shortsighted. So too does the notion that Dombrowski will rapidly begin dealing away all of the club’s best prospects for established big leaguers this offseason.

Dombrowski rarely built strong farm systems in Detroit largely because the Tigers were so good and so rarely picked near the top of the draft. Moreover, team owner Mike Illitch has never hid his desire to bring a championship to Detroit, which gave Dombrowski the impetus to make win-now move after win-now move. When the present is ownership’s sole focus, building a strong farm system is never going to top a GM’s priority list.

All of which demonstrates how different a situation Dombrowski now finds himself in with Boston compared to his time in Detroit. Yes, he’ll probably trade away some young talent to help the big league roster this offseason, but any talk of a prospect fire-sale is likely overblown. Yes, Dombrowski may not be a “sabermetrics guy,” but the Tigers also never had the kind of analytics department in place that Boston has spent years building.

In many ways, the labeling of Dombrowski as an “old-school” evaluator is simply a product of the lingering desire to pit stats and scouting against each other.

During his tenure with the Tigers, Dombrowski seldom enjoyed the depth of minor league talent that he now has at his disposal in Boston. With loads of touted prospects and an ownership group that understands the value of homegrown players, something tells me Dombrowski will end up keeping more youngsters than he trades away.

As for the organization’s commitment to analytics, that approach has always come straight from Henry, who originally hired Epstein to employ just such a numbers-driven method. With Henry still in charge and much of the team’s analytics infrastructure still in place, Dombrowski will surely have plenty of reason to use all the progressive information the Red Sox can come up with when making personnel decisions.

In many ways, the labeling of Dombrowski as an “old-school” evaluator is simply a product of the lingering desire to pit stats and scouting against each other. Just as most organizations make use of both scouting and analytics, so too will Dombrowski make use of all the information at his disposal, a notion he stressed during Wednesday’s introductory press conference. And after all, Cherington started out in Boston as a scout under Dan Duquette.

The Red Sox have long been an organization that uses scouting reports to inform their decision-making. But they’ve also found great success by pushing the envelope, seeking new ways in which they can gather and use data as an informational tool.

In Detroit, Dombrowski didn’t have the luxury of an ownership group that invested heavily in finding innovative ways to gain an edge. Boston’s faith in analytics will only give Dombrowski another source of insight as he rebuilds the roster.

To be sure, Dombrowski’s hiring will bring some change within the Red Sox front office. Cherington is already gone, and there will surely be plenty of baseball ops employees who also depart the organization. Boston does seem ready to begin dealing away a few more prospects than it has in the past, though that doesn’t mean the Red Sox are suddenly going to abandon the focus on scouting and player development that has served them so well.

The Red Sox hired Dombrowski because of his player evaluation skills, his strong track record of success and the organization’s need for better leadership. By pairing Dombrowski’s strengths with the same type of long-term approach that has served them well in the past, Boston’s owners are hoping to build the “next great Red Sox team” that Cherington never quite delivered.

Photo by Andrew Weber/USA Today Sports Images

There’s plenty of time to speculate as to how Dave Dombrowski, now Boston’s president of baseball operations, figures to change the Red Sox moving forward. The days before us will be filled withtalks of trading prospects, Rick Porcello jokes, David Price speculation and whispers as to what’s next for Cherington and his staff. We’ll get to some of that in a moment.

Any discussion of Tuesday’s tumultuous night at Fenway Park, should, however, begin with a look at Ben Cherington’s time in Boston, and how he became the owner of one of the strangest legacies not just in Red Sox history, but of any general manager in recent memory.

Read the rest of the story for free on Baseball Prospectus.

Photo by Andrew Weber/USA Today Sports Images

Yet that message was, essentially, what John Henry relayed to all of what remains of Red Sox Nation on Tuesday afternoon. And while the sentiment may not feel satisfying given the justifiable frustration built on 200-plus games of crappy baseball, Henry is probably right in his decision to stay the course.

Still, John Henry is a baseball owner who needed to hold a press conference in June. That is never a good sign.

The message Henry delivered was clear, it was fair and it was reasoned. But there’s a real feeling, thanks to Boston’s dismal 2012, dismal 2014 and dismal start to 2015, that this is the last time Henry will be able to hold a press conference like this without disrupting the status quo. In Boston, the good will you generate with a World Series win doesn’t last past a season or two: at least not when your campaigns that don’t end in championships are this hard to watch.

John Henry sounds like a man who knows that, and while he did his best to talk Red Sox fans off the ledge, he left just enough room for himself to effect change on a massive scale without seeming like a hypocrite if things don’t turn around.

If you missed Henry’s press conference, his points are best summed up by this tweet from the Providence Journal’s Tim Britton:

Takeaways from Henry: pic.twitter.com/KOIIiThvbo

— Tim Britton (@TimBritton) June 2, 2015

Let’s start, then, with the first point. On the one hand, Henry gave a very vocal, very pointed defense of John Farrell and Ben Cherington, who have both come under fire in recent weeks as the Red Sox have stumbled to their present 22-29 record. Henry did not need to give such a vote of confidence to these two men.

On the other hand … what’s he going to say? Leaving Cherington and Farrell twisting in the wind does nothing if Henry plans on letting them finish out the season, and quite frankly, there’s little reason to believe that their dismissals would lead to improved performance on the field.

Yes, there’s the sweeping notion that change is better than complacency, and one can understand the argument that Farrell’s “message isn’t being heard” by a group of veterans with whom he won the World Series 19 months ago. But we can’t be sure that “shaking things up” would do much of anything. The Red Sox have already attempted to “shake things up” by firing Juan Nieves, changing the batting order, sending Justin Masterson to Siberia, etc. The pitching has generally been a little better since, but the Red Sox as a team have not.

Photo by Greg M. Cooper/USA Today Sports Images

Farrell isn’t a great in-game tactician. Cherington gambled when he built this rotation. We knew these things four months ago, and nothing has changed. The former can be fixed in-season, but in the grand scheme of things probably isn’t that important. The latter matters a lot, but firing Cherington in-season won’t change what’s been done. Henry knows this, even if the majority of Red Sox fans don’t want to hear it. His defense of his GM and his manager makes sense.

Let’s move on to points two and four, which are connected: the offense needs to change its approach, but it’s far more talented than it’s showed to this point. Since Henry and co. took over the Red Sox, they’ve built their offense around patience and power, grinding out at-bats against starters and feasting on the soft underbelly that middle relievers often represent.

This year, Mike Napoli and David Ortiz are both within the top-10 in the league in pitches per plate appearance, with Mookie Betts, ranking at 12 and Dustin Pedroia at 35. It’s a patient offense, ranking first in the league in P/PA, tied with the Chicago Cubs, at a neat 4.00.

Yet as of Henry’s press conference, that patience had translated to just 3.82 runs per game — “good” for just 25th in the league — and while Boston is fourth in walks they’re third-to-last in extra-base hits, 22nd in OPS and 21st in TAv. Reaching base is still the most important offensive skill set a player can have, fundamentally, but the Red Sox aren’t putting a ton of runners on base despite their patience (.315 OBP) and they aren’t pushing those runners across.

It’s clear that the front office made a concerted effort to add some selective aggression to the lineup. Pablo Sandoval is not a patient hitter. Rusney Castillo is not a patient hitter. Hanley Ramirez will take a walk, to be sure, but he’s not generally *as* patient as many others in this lineup.

But it’s just not clicking. Sandoval is hitting just .251/.317/.371. Ramirez is hitting .261/.311/.483 and has given back a ton of value on defense. Castillo hasn’t had much of an opportunity to make an impact, but he’s at .233/.258/.322. Add in Ortiz’s and Betts’ struggles and the total lack of production from behind the plate and it’s no wonder Boston isn’t scoring any runs.

Still, Henry’s vote of confidence in the offense is reasonable. They should be better than this, and odds are they will be moving forward. The Red Sox’s .269 BABIP is worst in the league: that should turn around. Ortiz, Sandoval and Ramirez are better hitters than they’ve shown to date, and there’s every reason to believe that Betts, Castillo, Xander Bogaerts and, to some extent, Blake Swihart will improve as the season goes on. They won’t all improve, of course, but if two or three do and Boston’s luck turns around, they’ll score more than four runs a game. Henry told us not to worry about a lot of things last night, yes, but when it comes to the offense, it’s tough to argue with him.  This, too, makes sense.

Henry’s third point, however–that the pitching should be good enough–is wishful thinking. We knew coming into the season that Boston’s rotation had the potential to be a sore spot. Rick Porcello and Wade Miley are fine rotation pieces, but viewing them as building blocks was risky. Clay Buchholz has always been an enigma. Joe Kelly showed little to suggest he’d be an effective starter last year, and Masterson showed even less.

Cherington’s inability to assemble an adequate pitching staff for 2015 is his most damning failure to date.

Even with Buchholz, Miley and Porcello all being decent this season (for the most part), this Red Sox rotation and pitching staff in general has been a tire fire. Boston has the third-worst ERA, eighth-worst FIP and ninth-worst DRA in the league. Masterson isn’t a starter anymore, Kelly probably isn’t either and the bullpen looks to have two truly trustworthy figures in Junichi Tazawa and Koji Uehara.

It’s easy to understand why Cherington made the gamble he made — that a ground-ball-heavy staff would be good enough in front of a solid defense to survive — but it hasn’t worked, and there was always a good chance it wouldn’t work. His inability to assemble an adequate pitching staff for 2015 is his most damning failure to date, and there’s a real chance it will play a major role in preventing this team from reaching the postseason.

Maybe Eduardo Rodriguez will prove to be a savior. Maybe Steven Wright really is Tim Wakefield 2.0. Maybe Brian Johnson or Henry Owens or some pitcher brought in via trade will provide the spark and talent this group needs, but it’s more likely that Cherington came up snake eyes on this bunch. Buchholz, Porcello and Miley are fine members of a starting rotation, but when that rotation’s ceiling is “hopefully league average” to begin with, the architecture is flawed.

Henry knows this, yet he made it clear that the whole organization was on board with this strategy, and he won’t let Cherington take the fall. It’s commendable, even if it doesn’t do much to help the Red Sox or their fans right now.

All of this leads us to Henry’s last point, one that’s equal parts reassuring and terrifying: he looks at this team and he knows that the Red Sox’s master plan may have been wrong. He knows it’s a real possibility that, for the third time in three years, the people he has employed have put or are contributing to an unwatchable product on the field. While he’s doing his best to shield Cherington, Farrell and everyone else involved, John Henry is not a blind man.

Let’s finish, then, with the most interesting quote of the night, for my money. While Henry was steadfast in his support for Cherington saying he’d be “the general manager for a long time,” he did leave himself a back door. Also per the Britton, Henry had this to offer when asked about Boston’s offseason:

Henry’s entire statement to whether the Red Sox spent money the right way this offseason: pic.twitter.com/B82Y2nPNvv — Tim Britton (@TimBritton) June 2, 2015

It’s a startlingly honest quote in today’s age, and it’s one that suggests to me, at least, that while Henry has Cherington’s back, the Red Sox owner also knows his GM has made some mistakes. He’s aligning himself with Cherington, not leaving him on an island, but I think it leaves just enough room for Henry to swing the axe if the Sox suffer through their third uncompetitive summer in Cherrington’s four years.

Still, firing Cherington right now does nothing. Firing Farrell might do something … but it might not. The Red Sox have played like dog crap and it’s been tough to watch and there’s plenty of blame to go around, but for better or worse, this is the team we’ve got for 2015. There is a young nucleus in place with too much promise to gut the team, and the veterans who can be sold off are unlikely to bring much back in return. There’s no fire sale to be had this time, and it’s tough to imagine Cherington shipping off his precious MLB-ready prospects now. Cherington made his bed this offseason, and he made Farrell’s bed and Henry’s bed, and for a little while longer, everyone needs to sleep in it.

To many, the conclusion Henry has drawn isn’t satisfying. But at the end of the day, the Red Sox are just 4.5 games out of an AL East division that’s still very much up for grabs. Despite their horrid play, their horrid luck and some questionable decisions made along the way, they’re right in the thick of this race.

If Boston manages to right the ship and make the playoffs, we’ll look back on this and think, “Henry was right.” Farrell’s job will be safe. Cherington’s job will be safe. We will all be happy.

If this goes further south, if the Red Sox prove uninteresting into July and NESN’s ratings drop, Henry will have more difficult decisions ahead. Boston will not take kindly to three losing seasons in four years, and Henry’s reason and calm will look to many like apathy and disinterest.

Here’s to hoping it doesn’t come to that, for if the Red Sox fail in 2015, John Henry will have to hold a whole new set of press conferences. And Cherington, Farrell and many others may not survive them.

Photo by Steve Mitchell/USA Today Sports Images