Kenley Jansen: Boston is a city of stars
"It's a city of stars, and to win championships." - Red Sox closer Kenley Jansen on the 'Baseball Isn't Boring' podcast.
The Red Sox have goals.
One is to start winning again. Craig Breslow has started to attack that vision by bobbing and weaving his way through trades involving some names you are familiar with (Alex Verdugo, Tyler O'Neill), and some who he hopes will be on fans' radar in the not-too-distant future.
But there is another mission. One which the baseball purists might roll their eyes at, yet has to be a very real 'North Star' for this organization. The Red Sox need to start delivering the kind of anticipation and excitement fan bases like the Dodgers and Yankees have cloaked their fan bases with ... again.
The Red Sox were never going to get Shohei Ohtani. New Balance or no New Balance, that wasn't going to happen. They are expected, however, to uncover their own version of star-power-jumper-cables somewhere along the way.
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Jansen was right. Boston is a city of stars. And right now - particularly juxtaposing the giddiness emanating from Los Angeles and New York - it hasn't felt less that way since this ownership group took over. The chest-thumping, memories of big-ticket-item press conferences and David Ortiz pointing to 'Red Sox' on the front of his uniform a proof of an alpha MLB existence all just seems so foreign.
Whenever the notion of the Red Sox not being the drawing card or destination it once was comes up, the team's chief decision-makers will immediately alter their tone to one of defiance. Not true, they will say. And trading for big names? "Sustainability!!!!!" That is usually the word of the day when those sort of suggestions come up. Not quite willing to go down the road taken by the Yankees, who entered the offseason also desperate push aside the growing apathy from their fan base.
Don't get this twisted. Ultimately, winning is what gets any fan base excited. When Fenway fans were pouring celebratory beer on their face throughout the 2021 postseason run, there weren't concerns about all those "Betts" jersey sales that left the gift shop a few years before. You can be a three-yard-and-a-cloud-of-dust team that wins, and nobody will be complaining about the lack of flea-flickers and end-arounds.
And nobody has forgotten that neither one of last year's offseason champs - the Mets and Padres - made the postseason.
Understand, however, that the patience for that payoff isn't top-of-mind these days. Maybe that has been exacerbated by the Soto and Ohtani news. Still, the need for Boston baseball fans to feel they are in the cool kids' club seems like it should be a priority considering the expectations that have been put in place for the past 20-or-so years.
I dropped myself into the Dodgers' fan base in the middle of September. Then came integration into Philadelphia's fandom a few weeks later. It was like another planet compared to life in and around Fenway Park for the majority of the 2023 baseball season. Why? Winning was one. Actually being invested in the players who doing the winning was another.
It wasn't that long ago it felt the same way in Boston. And it's that reality that has led many of those Red Sox alumni who helped build those expectations to either mutter behind the scenes "What are we doing?" Or go the Pedro Martinez route and continuously predict players like Ohtani are are, of course, going to land in Boston.
It feels good to be perceived as a legitimate resident of the MLB's player acquisition deep end, even if sometimes there is a bit of treading water. Just ask the Blue Jays' followers. Even though their hearts were ripped out with Ohtani's Instagram post a few minutes after 3 p.m. Sunday, living the out-of-nowhere life of one of the envy of the baseball world for the past few weeks should add a spring to their step.
The Red Sox need to deliver that spring.
Maybe it's coming. Certainly those same former Red Sox who have been grumbling under their breaths for the past couple of seasons are believing that one of their own - Breslow - understands the need to not only change the results, but also the narrative. And there is still time, with the offseason's dam not having broken yet.
In the meantime, it's a worthwhile exercise to soak in these other teams' excitement and anticipation. Will the script be flipped come October, with all those other teams that didn't have shock-and-awe offseasons actually doing what the Diamondbacks did? Could be. That's not the point.
Kenley was right: Boston should be a city of stars. Now it's time to start remembering that.