I'm not sure this dichotomy scans.
1) If the team wins, the seats will fill, the TVs will remain tuned, and the advertising revenue will come. That's the bottom-line incentive in play here. Apart from prestige and pride, ownership wants a successful team.
2) Yet good custodianship of the club means there will also be some lean years, and some development years where initially unimpressive players like Pedroia, Xander, Casas and Bello get to adjust.
3) PR will always put a positive spin on the upcoming season.
The fuzzy talk-radio/podcast realm might attempt to drive down pink-hat interest in tickets in the abstract, but I suspect tickets will sell when the time comes. Especially if the team actually preforms. I mean, was there a year where a segment of the Boston media didn't find something to be bitterly and deeply critical about re: ownership? It's as predictable as the sunrise.
And yet, as you say, I honestly doubt the pink-hats are literally hanging on every off-season tweet, be it positive or negative. Do they know or care about half the stuff that gets raised here? Will it affect them during the season?
So what's the argument? To reach potential pink-hats in the middle of their busy holiday season, and "reinforce public trust" we ought to sign a "proven winner" like Pablo Sandoval/Carl Crawford? Or placate talk-radio personalities? Or trumpet to the skies that there's a chance the team will suck next year?
No, I think the decline you're speaking of is more rooted in the hours-long midnight-ending games than the Sox off-season PR.
If you want to see what a truly irrelevant team looks like, come visit me in Miami.
(And lest this be misread, it's not a blanket endorsement of either ownership or management.)
Your first sentence is true. If the team wins, all of the good things will happen. But they finished last last year. They finished last two years ago. There's been a lot of hew and crying about the Sox being cheap and they haven't really gone out of their way this offseason to change that perception*. Confidence in the Sox is in the toilet now. Like 8Slim, I get about three to five emails a week from the Red Sox begging me to buy tickets or ticket packages or partial ticket packages or tickets with free gifts. When things were going well, I don't recall getting this much of a full court press. Right now, December 15, the Sox don't look very good and they need people to buy tickets to the upcoming season. I doubt that many people are doing that in the volume that Boston expects. The reason is because the team is, at best, boring and at worst, dysfunctional.
* Whether the team really is cheap or not is immaterial. So many people think that they are, that at this point the truth doesn't matter at all. That's an issue.
I don't think that I agree with your second assessment. Why does a team like Boston, a team with untold riches and one of the Cadillac franchises of the sport, need to go through lean years. And didn't we already go through a bunch of lean years during the last decade? (2012-2015 -- aside from 2013). Are we going big boom--bigger bust every five years? That sucks. I think that's okay for a Pittsburgh, an Oakland, a Tampa Bay, but Boston? I don't think so. And before you ask, this doesn't mean that every season is World Series or bust. That's not what I'm saying, but there needs to be some sort of hope for the dawning of a new season. That's what drives ticket sales in the winter. Hope for summer, hope for great baseball.
Yeah. Obviously the PR folks paints a rosy picture. But at this point their painting with finger paints and a Gatling gun. They're all over the place with their message. Either we're pregnant or not, this half measures stuff is not working. I think that while most people wouldn't be happy with a full reboot, if that's what the Sox feel that they need to do, just do it. It can't be any worse than what they're doing now. "Yeah, we're in on EVERYONE -- until the player tells us he won't take below market value."
Maybe sign a "proven winner" like Manny Ramirez. Or Johnny Damon. Or the dozens of other free agents that the Sox signed that have helped them the next season. You're making the same mistake that the FO is making, there are bad signings yes, but not every free agent is a bad deal. And yes, you need to assure people that the 2023 is not going to be another lost season. And what's wrong with that, BTW? The Boston Red Sox are an entertainment based organization. Rafael Devers isn't curing cancer. Chris Sale isn't building rockets. Kike Hernandez isn't trying to end the Ukranian/Russian war. Half of these guys hit a ball with a bat, the other half try to have a ball miss a bat. This idea that the season and the preparation for future seasons is so sacrosanct and must be viewed with the utmost seriousness is silly.
You're losing sight of what the Red Sox and MLB and all of sports really is. It's a way to pass time. It's entertainment.
The Red Sox should trumpet that the team won't suck next year. Why? Because of the same reason Marvel tells the audience that the next Marvel movie won't stink. Or why Taylor Swift tells her fans her next album is the best album she's ever done. Or why Malcolm Gladwell is letting people know that his next book is super important and will be full of a lot really neat ways of looking at things. Because they're all competing for your dollar. Yes, the Boston Red Sox should be spending money to make money. They should be promoting to the lowest common denominator. They should be doing what they can for today, because tomorrow might never come. Someone said up thread, what if Mayer sucks? Or what if he busts his leg on a go-kart accident? Then where is this team. And BTW, I think it's malpractice that the Red Sox are constantly hyping a 19-year-old kid in A+ as the next big thing. That's a lot of pressure to heap on a kid, "You're the savior of the Red Sox, buddy and we're not spending dime one until you prove it."