One of the founding principles of this newsletter is an avoidance of the way that modern baseball discourse focuses on value. Personnel moves are unavoidably and unceasingly dissected by fans in a manner that overly commodifies and, in the opinion of this missive, flattens the player and sport involved.
The way that owners and front office employees have decided to view baseball talent is largely detached from the reasons why we watch and enjoy baseball talent, and I do not have a strong interest in pushing another cart down that deeply-rutted path. However, the Red Sox’s recent signing of 3B and all-around nuisance Alex Bregman sparked some thoughts on what value is for us as fans, and who is responsible for providing it. So yes, we’re talking about value today, just not player value.
As we so often must, we have to first accept the realities of the situation: Baseball fans and baseball owners are seeking different things. Fans simply want a compelling baseball team, fun stadium, and likeable broadcasters to enjoy. They want memorable players, moments, games, and seasons. Winning, more often than not, serves as the simplest and most undistilled means by which to extract those things.
Owners want profit. You can hear the refrain from the random internet user now: “They’re businessmen. They’re running it like a business.” I could speak at some length about how much we fail ourselves when we so readily defend the mindsets of the very richest and most powerful among us simply for being rich and powerful, but I also grant that the viewpoint holds truth. It’s also not going to change, whatever I say here.
In a better, purer system, owner profits would be tied more directly to providing a team’s fans what they want, and while our goals would still remain separate, the means would sufficiently intermingle to generally provide an experience all parties can tolerate. Sadly, that is not the system modernity has created. Organizations can and do completely ignore their fans and, in extreme cases, the broad concept of fielding a team in the name of preserving margins. This is made possible thanks to ever-diversifying media and real estate holdings, licensing deals, and various pagan blood rituals.
These high-falutin concepts were all swimming in my head as I read about the Red Sox signing Alex Bregman. Boston had no pressing place or need for the career-long third basemen. Rafael Devers is firmly (if somewhat doughily) ensconced at the hot corner, and Top 10 prospect Kristian Campbell is knocking on the door at second base, the position Bregman plans to play in Boston.
Furthermore, the Red Sox are not the same organizational behemoth - the proto-Dodgers if you will - that they were for the 2010’s when they consistently ran Top 3-5 payrolls, won World Series, and generally acted like one of the league’s biggest and most aggressive bullies. In fact, ever since parting ways with Dave Dombrowski after 2019, hiring Chaim Bloom and then immediately holding his family hostage until he traded Mookie Betts to LA, Boston has spent the better part of a decade acting a lot more like the Jerry Dipoto/John Stanton Mariners than a team owned by a global sports conglomerate and one of the sport’s premiere glamour franchises. If you think you’re annoyed at the Mariners running a mid-tier payroll, imagine the literal Boston Red Sox doing the same, as they’ve done since 2022.
Yet, they signed Bregman anyway. He had offers for more years and more guaranteed money, but an admittedly mind-boggling $40 million dollars per year with opt outs was enough to pry him from both the only organization and position he has ever known. While nowhere near where they have been historically, nor where they belong given their pedigree and their owner’s unfathomable wealth, Boston is back in MLB’s Top 10 payroll, despite a roster currently projected to finish last in the AL East. It’s the very least they should be doing, but they did it.
This finally leads us to the role of the modern Baseball Operations Department, and the way owners, fans, and their often disparate goals outlined above depend on it to bridge that gap. The nature of the job demands incredible political deftness to do well. Owners, most of whom do not care about on-field success unless it draws a straight line to profits, depend on baseball personnel to extract a level of competence at the ballpark that, if nothing else, doesn’t lead to a fan revolt, at the highest level of efficiency possible. Fans depend on that same department to act as their avatar to ownership, their one voice that, at least hypothetically, cares about winning as much as they do. They depend on them to use their direct access to the powers that be to advocate for the merits of improving the roster through whatever means are necessary.
At its core, like so many jobs, a great front office executive is in the relationship business. The job isn’t just about standing in front of microphones (or Zoom Call screens) and telling the fanbase about the team in a way that feels honest, forthright, and believable. It’s not just grinding through endless scouting reports and analytical write ups to figure out how to extract the most WAR from the budget handed to them by ownership. It’s not just being willing to step into a room with ownership and advocate for more resources. It’s all of them, together. A deft, subtle dance of economics, friendships, and good old fashioned salesmanship that ties together ownership’s need for green and the fans’ lust for winning.
That balance has been off-kilter in Seattle for a long, long time, but especially the past 2-3 seasons. The fans do not trust anything this front office says to them about anything, the scant acquisitions they do make have been predominantly horrific, and they have been either unwilling or unable to convince John Stanton and Co. to take the extra financial step to bring in elite talent even if it means going beyond previously defined budgets.
There has not been a time where the Mariners signing a player like Alex Bregman (or Pete Alonso. Or any number of players) could impact the season as much as this one. An offseason that added 5-6 wins would make Seattle a prohibitive divisional favorite, and arguably the best roster in the American League. Yet, in the end, they have done largely same thing they’ve done the past two offseasons in signing old veterans of questionable skill and/or health.
The Mariners’ front office absolutely knows all of that, and whatever happens in the 2025 season the front office has definitively failed to add any value to the fans by selling the notion to ownership. You can defend them by throwing up your hands and swearing up and down that the Mariners’ owners are uniquely spendthrift, but history simply does not backup that assertion.
I have no idea what the Alex Bregman signing will mean for the 2025 Red Sox. Perhaps he’s a one-off; mashing doubles off the Green Monster for a year like 2010 Adrian Beltre, exercising his opt-out and signing elsewhere next season. Maybe the Red Sox are terrible, the positional change doesn’t take, the contract looks like an albatross, and Breslow and Co. are fired in August.
What I do know is that the Craig Breslow Front Office convinced the Fenway Sports Group that increasing payroll by 25% this year was something worth doing for a great player; recent history, roster construction, and inner-division competition be damned. They have created excitement and enthusiasm for the fans of the organization.
To me, and if you’re reading this I bet for you as well, that is a decent definition of baseball value. I know other parties have different definitions, but we aren’t them. We do not have to pretend to be. I will not, and hope you’ll join me.