If the Boston Red Sox plan on spending less that 230 million dollars in 2024 than zero of those dollars will be mine. I will neither purchase NESN or attend Fenway Park. I'm not paying for prime rib and getting mediocrity instead.
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If they start winning, you may not show up but a lot of other folks absolutely will. They know this. I would love a look at their data on the fanbase.
Probably depends on just how much winning. Get off to a 2018-like start and sure, the park will be full and tickets will be in demand.
Kick around a few games over .500? I imagine it’ll be worse than last year.
I’m guessing it took the Sox longer than most teams to see their attendance recover from COVID.
They drew ~1% more when overall ratings were up 7% across the league. Its apples and oranges I admit (attendance to ratings) but if we assume the pace of play bump, you could argue they dropped share again.
Is that tickets sold or actual people who attended? There were a lot of games last year when the reported attendance seemed a bit higher than it looked.
Good question, and I imagine plenty of ticket counting/accounting chicanery regardless. I guess what I assume is the same chicanery as last year : )
Fair.
It just seems to me that the mood of the fan base has been getting darker and darker. Or maybe more and more ambivalent is a better way to frame it.
Either way, if the Sox are scuffling along at .500 in June I suspect there will be loads of cheap tix on the market this summer.
Looking over at BRef, I'm finding the Sox were up 1.8% last year compared to 2022, while MLB overall was up 9.6% from 2022. So while the Sox were holding more or less steady, the sport overall had a bigger bounce. It does seem fair to guess that was a fan response to the quality of the team (both in 2022 and 2023 — often attendance lags the team performance a little).
The other thing, which is impossible to quantify, is that many of those fans weren’t Red Sox fans. When I went to Sox/Orioles in Sep, it was Baltimore North. So, attendance stats may look ok but I would guess that the % of Sox fans at these games declined.
Fortunately for ownership, Boston and Fenway in Sep will always be a great trip.
I’ll grant that it’s absolutely not something to bank on, but does a bullpen as strong as Boston’s is likely to be give them a realistic chance to outperform their Pythag? If I remember correctly, the Orioles were able to greatly outperform theirs last year on the backs of their wipeout bullpen.
Do you feel like fans of other teams are appearing in Fenway at a different rate?
It does to me, but I don’t go to actual games so I might be influenced more by the story lines and coverage.
Thanks for diving deeper as this is even rougher than I thought. The tide rose 10 points(!) and the Sox less than 2%…if I’m an owner I feel like my attendance dropped 8 points due to whatever my management was doing.
FWIW, I voted $265m, when the only penalties are money since I took the poll as what "should" happen.
What will happen, I think, is they continue to spend $Luxury Tax Threhold (.97). If it looks like they're serious WS contenders, they'll go over in season or for a year or something, but they won't stay above the tax threshold consistently.
Oh, and on the attendance thing, I think that is what a lot of us (at least those of us in the Boston area) have been talking about. They're ALWAYS going to sell tickets so long as Fenway Park is standing. From May - August it's an incredibly nice place to come and see a baseball game for the history, the ambiance, the surrounding area and the city of Boston. Not only for the fans of the visiting team but for baseball fans in general. The "commitment" of people that don't actually care about the Red Sox to come and see Fenway Park during school vacation isn't going anywhere.
However, they're going to have pretty bad actual attendance (optics) in April and once school's start up again in the Autumn and in terms of regional fan interest, they're at best 3rd (they're likely still more relevant than the Bs but I'm not certain of that and it's basically impossible to quantify anyway) and a lot closer to being 5th than they are safely in 3rd. Which is really a shame, especially for one of the few places were baseball is / was / should be incredibly important.
What will happen, I think, is they continue to spend $Luxury Tax Threhold (.97). If it looks like they're serious WS contenders, they'll go over in season or for a year or something, but they won't stay above the tax threshold consistently.
Oh, and on the attendance thing, I think that is what a lot of us (at least those of us in the Boston area) have been talking about. They're ALWAYS going to sell tickets so long as Fenway Park is standing. From May - August it's an incredibly nice place to come and see a baseball game for the history, the ambiance, the surrounding area and the city of Boston. Not only for the fans of the visiting team but for baseball fans in general. The "commitment" of people that don't actually care about the Red Sox to come and see Fenway Park during school vacation isn't going anywhere.
However, they're going to have pretty bad actual attendance (optics) in April and once school's start up again in the Autumn and in terms of regional fan interest, they're at best 3rd (they're likely still more relevant than the Bs but I'm not certain of that and it's basically impossible to quantify anyway) and a lot closer to being 5th than they are safely in 3rd. Which is really a shame, especially for one of the few places were baseball is / was / should be incredibly important.
I live out of state so not the best authority here. Would be curious to hear from those who go more regularly. I’m assuming my experience was largely due to the Sox being out of it and the Orioles being on their way to the playoffs. Secondary market makes it easy for home fans to unload tickets.
In terms of merchandise, in 2022 the Sox were 3rd at 479 million - So people keep buying stuff.
https://mlbrun.com/mlb-merchandise-sales-team
In terms of player jersey sales the Sox did not have a player in the top 20.
https://sports.yahoo.com/20-best-selling-mlb-jerseys-204845265.html
https://mlbrun.com/mlb-merchandise-sales-team
In terms of player jersey sales the Sox did not have a player in the top 20.
https://sports.yahoo.com/20-best-selling-mlb-jerseys-204845265.html
Is it really strong? The bullpen was pretty average last year. It's real strength is possibly the top end (though Jansen is rather average closer). I don't think it is a bullpen that is going to give you a huge edge.
This is the exact reason why ownership is thrilled with their decisions. People keep buying stuff and showing up to see a bad team with one flawed superstar (Devers). The fanbase is loyal/big enough that they will always get people to show up - even in down years, tickets may be more affordable to those who are priced out when the team is doing well. Or visitors. If people are already coming to the stadium and buying the stuff, why would ownership feel inclined to invest more? I personally maintain that FSG has other considerations (upcoming NBA team, the Pens, whatever they are doing with Liverpool) that the Sox just are not a priority, especially when they reliably print money.
FWIW, I think that the Sox should be investing up to the CBT. They should also be pouring resources into building the development infrastructure. But I say that as a lapsed fan and not an owner.
With the caveats that I'm not claiming it as fact and I don't have a lot of time to dig too deep right now, it has seemed to me that predicting future bullpen performance is very tricky regardless of the years prior, though I agree that Boston was just pretty much good to OK last year.
There seems to be so much variance in individual reliever performance from year to year and so much turnover that even a seemingly well put together pen may not hit/click. I'm pretty sure I've seen some data around here somewhere on that, but I could be mistaken. From my chair it just seems that even if one believes the pen was anywhere from awful to great last year, it might not be all that predictive. Year to year, the bullpen just seems to be the hardest thing to get right for a lot of teams.
In the case of the Sox this year, I'm hopeful that with Breslow and Bailey, they can increase the odds that any variance is in the right direction.
Agree with this. And I have to imagine that bullpen performance is very context dependent.
The Sox pen did an admirable job last year when we went weeks with only 3 starters. Much better than I thought they would. But their decline in performance after that might have been driven by having to cover anywhere from 5 to 9 innings every game for weeks. Seemed like they got burned out.
I’d hope having a relatively intact 5 man rotation that can average 5 innings a start would lead to a better performing pen. Not sure we’re going to have that, however.
I agree with this so incredibly strongly, that it can't be +1'ed enough.
My own take, because I don't want it to be ascribed that I'm attributing this to you @CR67dream, is that as such - and based on the relatively small number of innings these pitchers eat up in a season - if a team is going to adhere to any manner of budget, I think bullpen spending (excepting closer) should be kept to a bare minimum.
I said this last year too, and as great as Martin was (and he was awesome) when a team is lacking in so many more "important" areas, it doesn't really matter. If the bullpen is the strongest part of your team, your team probably kind of stinks.
Generally speaking, I think that a good analytics team can cobble together a bullpen almost based on all prospects that aren't good enough to start and guys on very low (MLB minimum) type contracts. Until and unless the Red Sox choose to blow through the payroll (or have gotten to a Braves type situation of cost controlled starting pitching and position players) they really shouldn't spend at all on the bull pen (in my opinion excepting the closer).
*We'll see, but I kind of think Breslow seems to be taking this approach with stockpiling optionable arms and quasi prospects. It also makes me hope he's going to deal Martin to a team that could use a very good bullpen piece but ostensibly a) isn't using a budget or b) will pay up in terms of prospects for Boston to finance their bullpen (Miami, this means you!).
But there was also speculation that the poor attendance for the Yankee series at Fenway in September, and the bargain basement prices for the tickets to those games on the resale market, was sort of the last straw before Bloom was fired.
Through the beginning of August, the bullpen was 4th in baseball with 4.6 fWAR. Then we killed them all with the August openers gambit and the parade of cast-offs made sure we finished the season average overall. 0.3 fWAR over the last 2 months and most of that was heroics from Martin and Winck rescuing them from negative numbers.
I've been a weekend season ticket holder for 25 years and up until around 2017 I knew or could recognize just about all the other season ticket holders around me. Everyone attended enough games to be familiar. But slowly the park started to be filled with visiting fans and it's accelerated even more in recent years. I was in a new section for the last few seasons and saw almost nobody who appeared to be regulars on a game to game basis.
There are three big reasons I can think of for what's happened.
1. Big Papi retired. He was the last big Red Sox star and he took a lot of the casual fans with him. You could go up to anyone on the street and mention Nomar, Papi, Pedro, or Manny and it's very likely they'd know who you were talking about. Raffy, Xander, and Mookie never reached that level.
2. The team made it very easy to sell tickets. The Red Sox ran their own internal ticket selling program which was eventually replaced by worse ones by MLB with StubHub and SeatGeek. In all three cases, you could easily click and list tickets you didn't want to use.
3. Prices went up significantly, especially with the tiered system. Now if you're a season ticket holder, you have to think really hard about whether you want to go to the game or try to recoup some of that cash with the hopes of saving money for the playoffs. It's hard to justify multiple $100+ seats in a week when it's fairly easy to get some of that cash back.
Sure, the team hasn't been good, but there have been bad stretches before (2010-2012) and the park wasn't filled with visitors. Honestly, I think they'd rather fill the place with out of towners. They sell the tickets initially, get a cut of the resale, and then sell more concessions and other junk to people who are making the game a destination rather than a regular event. It kills the atmosphere and hurts the local interest in the team, but that short term cash looks nice.
Seemed to me the bullpen was really strong last year until the injuries to rotation forced them to be completely decimated by the endless bullpen games. Closer to normal injury luck (no guarantee there) and God forbid adding another starter should really help that same scenario not playing out all over again.
Martin, Winckowski, Schreiber, and Whitlock could anchor a really strong pen. One more starter acquisition bolsters that by adding Houck or Pivetta into the mix.
I’m with you on Jansen, though. He’s in no way a tire fire but also nothing special at this point in his career.
I meant to add this as you are spot on. Middle relievers is a bit of a craps shoot. Logically it makes sense. It is the worst pitchers on your roster or unknowns. Generally people try to avoid moving prospects to the bullpen until they are shown they can't start or there isn't a spot for them.
We could have a good bullpen but I don't think that gives you a huge edge over your projections. Depth gives you the biggest edge.
I think "No/Yes" is probably the closest to where I'd be. The answer to the first seems clearly to be no.
For the second, I'd be much happier with a competitive 2024 team, and I would be upset if they did long-term damage to add a bit of payroll. But there are always ways to improve the team with one-year contracts (or by taking on salary for a single year in trades) which might not be the most efficient way to spent money, but are nevertheless improvements that make the team better in 2024 than it would be without spending that money and don't change the outlook past 2024. So yes, in that case I'd be happy to watch a competitive team (I definitely prefer a cheap, competitive team to an expensive, non-competitive one), but I'd also be upset with the front office for not using all of the available resources to find even a slight improvement in the chances that team has to win.