The Major League Baseball trade deadline typically serves as a source of hope for baseball fans, but this season fans of the Boston Red Sox experienced what could more closely be described as confusion.
The Red Sox seemingly played both sides at the deadline, trading away contributors like catcher Christian Vázquez and reliever Jake Diekman, but acquired hopeful contributors like first baseman Eric Hosmer and outfielder Tommy Pham alongside some prospects.
Since the deadline passed on Aug. 2, Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom has offered an explanation for the team’s approach. But that seemingly hasn’t been enough, so Red Sox CEO Sam Kennedy got in on the action to help put questions about the future of the franchise to rest.
“We’re always building toward that next championship,” Kennedy told Tom Caron on Wednesday, as seen on NESN’s pregame coverage. “That is the goal of this organization. John Henry, Tom Werner, Mike Gordon, the partners of the Fenway Sports Group want that fifth World Series championship. We want the sixth, we want the seventh. So we’re always building toward a World Series championship and the goal is to try and play baseball in October each and every year.”
While hearing about the goal of the team may put an ease on some Red Sox fans’ minds, Kennedy tried to dig deeper regarding the process behind that goal.
“We’re going to continue to invest heavily in our major-league payroll. We’re going to continue to work the international markets as effectively as anybody. Scouting, player development, deploying analytics. Our baseball operations group will continue to have all the resources they need and we’re going to do the very best to be competitive at the major-league level in 2022, 2023 and 2024. But make no mistake, it’s hard and we’re in a hard division. We recognize that the competition has gotten better. So we’ve got to get better, and that’s on us. We have to be accountable for that.”
The Red Sox have a lot of ground to make up if they want to appear in continue playing into Oct. 2022. Boston entered Wednesday’s matchup with the Atlanta Braves five games behind the final American League wild card spot.
