John Henry bought the Red Sox in 2002 and has overseen four World Series championships, including the one that allowed the ghost of Babe Ruth to rest in peace.
He has hired future Hall of Famers like Theo Epstein and Terry Francona. He has transformed Fenway Park from a dying relic — ex-CEO John Harrington would've ridden the wrecking ball like Miley Cyrus — into perhaps the most iconic stadium in professional sports. He has consistently spent as aggressively as any owner in the game, he has largely given his executives the freedom to pursue the players they want (sometimes to a fault), and on his watch we stopped counting beyond 86.
Now we're supposed to believe he's an agent of chaos?
As a local radio host with Wisconsin roots might say, "Sorey."
Not buying it.
Henry may not be perfect — for such a believer in the wisdom of numbers, he can be awfully reactionary — but this notion that no one wants to be general manager is unfounded, and the suggestion that the organization is only a Sam Kennedy away from devolving into the Mets is downright ludicrous.
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An anonymous executive made both claims in a recent ESPN story that described an overall culture of misery in Boston. It follows up on a piece in The Athletic noting that an NL executive who visited Fenway in April couldn't believe how unhappy everyone was while receiving their World Series rings.
In both cases, some context is in order. For one, the Red Sox received their rings on April 9 after opening the season with a 3-8 road trip that featured two disastrous turns through the rotation and left us fearing that something was seriously wrong with ace Chris Sale.
A sign in the clubhouse before the home opener hinted at the crisis of confidence that would plague the team all season, noting that receiving the rings should serve as, "a reminder of how good we are." When the Red Sox went out and lost again to fall to 3-9, should we have expected them to be overjoyed? Or was maybe a little misery in order?
Also problematic: president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski wanted a new contract, leading to friction that could be felt throughout his department. Dombrowski constructed a turbocharged champion in 2018, but the Red Sox weren't built to last, and the fact that Henry could pivot from saying Dombrowski deserved an extension after the World Series clincher to leaving him hanging five months later created an atmosphere of instability.
Add to it the fact that the front office was factionalized — Dombrowski, Frank Wren, and the old guard on one side, and the Ben Cherington holdovers on the other — and you had a recipe for discontent. Once it became clear that Dombrowski wasn't ownership's man moving forward, though, much of that generational discord became temporary. The new GM will probably share a lot more in common with the holdovers than his predecessor.
This is not to say Henry hasn't screwed up. Firing Ben Cherington and then Dombrowski with World Series banners still crisply pressed doesn't scream stability, and whoever takes the job next will have every right to demand a long-term commitment.
(As an aside: I would argue that the Cherington/Dombrowski transition was an aberration born from consecutive last-place finishes, yes, but also Dombrowski's sudden availability after being fired by the Tigers. Had Dombrowski, who shared a history with Henry dating back to their Marlins days, not come along at that very moment, Cherington probably wouldn't have lost his job. And no matter what Dombrowski thinks, he was generally viewed as a hired-gun finisher, and not a long-term builder. He did his job, by the way.)
Henry failed to intervene when Epstein and former CEO Larry Lucchino took their feud to Defcon 1 levels in 2011, leading to Epstein's departure and the subsequent smear of Francona. Replacing Francona with Bobby Valentine basically amounted to setting the 2012 season on fire, and Henry admits botching the Jon Lester negotiations that cost the team its homegrown All-Star left-hander two years later.
Henry also spent some seriously bad money, whether it was on Carl Crawford, Pablo Sandoval, or David Price. Sale's extension looms as a potential albatross, too, and there's no reason the owner should get off scot-free because he let subordinates convince him those deals represented good business.
It doesn't help that the enigmatic Henry will never be a dynamic communicator, and we should probably just accept that public accountability will never be an organizational strong suit, either, even though fellow owner Tom Werner made his name bringing televised entertainment to the masses. They still owe us an explanation, for instance, on Dombrowski's ouster.
But let's be real. As long as Henry's in charge, the Red Sox will never be the freaking Mets. Running the Red Sox remains one of the best job in sports, and my guess is Dombrowski's successor will have no regrets.
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