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Betts Trade - Where do we go from here?

I know this is well worn territory here but I'm hoping this post helps heal my open wound caused by the loss of Betts. For perspective, I grew up in the 70s and 80s, so some of this likely is a function of the years of futility and stupid trades and signings (or lack of signings) that I watched over those years. I had also held out some hope that the Red Sox would have gone after him in free agency hard and after signing with the Dodgers for a market contract for a player of his caliber, its now all really sinking in that this guy is gone. No more highlight reel defensive put outs or clutch home runs, and no more of that huge smile that made Betts the heart and sole of the Red Sox (I love Bogey too, but Betts was that guy, not Bogey). It's also finally dawned on me that our run of consistently being relevant, year after year, is now over for a while. Look at history and what happens when teams make a destructive trade of this caliber in any sport, the team almost always disintegrates and has to be rebuilt from the ground up. My sincere hope is that Devers can slot into Betts' role in a few years (he' certainly has the charisma), but for now the organization is in utter chaos, having no legitimate pitching in the minors at all (at least until Song develops - if he develops) that's anywhere near solving the team's pitching woes and with the Yankees loaded back up, it's going to be a long while before we're looking at seriously competing for even a playoff spot.

Having said that, and we all know this trade was senseless from the get go, I want to get into the architect of the trade, Chaim Bloom. Congrats Chaim, you are now the proud owner of the second worst trade in Red Sox history, which, potentially at least, could make it the second worst trade in baseball history. If you break this thing down, essentially Bloom traded arguably the second best player in baseball, who was just starting to scratch his prime (in other words, he's likely going to continue to get better), for at best a platoon right fielder who if we're lucky will be a .270 to .290 hitter with marginal power (by the way, they could have just signed Brock Holt and put him out there and we'd be even. At least we knew Brock was solid and he was already part of the team fabric) and two players who MIGHT be decent players (a fraction of what Betts is though mind you) in 3 to 4 years and none of them were pitchers, which was the obvious hole in the team when the trade was made (especially considering that Price was still a decent #3 guy and every once in awhile you'd see that ace pop out). Now I understand the deal did have a young pitcher in it initially, but even I could have told you that Graterol was a set up reliever and not a starter so that deal would have been just as bad had it gone that way instead. What I completely fail to comprehend is why in the world you'd trade Betts and the rights to sign him before free agency (I'm convinced the Sox would have kept him if they'd just offered the guy the extra 2 years on the contract they had already thrown in front of him - what's the difference between a 10 and 12 year contract at that point, right?) without getting a top flight starting pitching prospect, of which the Dodgers have a bunch of them. In fact, this deal should have been scrapped the minute the Dodgers told Bloom Dustin May was a no go. To me that should have been the end of our trade discussions that included Betts period.

Now I don't know Bloom's reputation at all, but I do trust that the Red Sox ownership thoroughly vetted him, which makes this all the more perplexing. I also assume that someone explained to him before offering the job that the Red Sox are not the Rays and that this franchise is one of the wealthiest in all of sports, so trying to patch wins together with journeymen players while you let generational, homegrown players walk, isn't necessarily the philosophy the organization embodies. I am surprised though that ownership didn't explain to Bloom that because the Red Sox are not the Rays, you don't have to trade away the heart and sole of the team to deal with the payroll burden if it doesn't make sense...oh wait, they did tell him that repeatedly, publicly. That being the case, that tells me that Bloom is either way over his head with his current position (this is my opinion), or that he's an arrogant ego maniac that thought the fan base would accept "the best available" package for Betts he could get so that he could get rid of the Price salary (which was really the issue, it wasn't paying Betts, which makes this hurt even more), save the draft picks, and make a big splash with his new team (basically make a big name for himself). If I'm wrong about who Bloom is and it's the latter of that, he's also stupid, which is why I don't think he's an arrogant, ego maniac as I don't believe ownership would have hired someone like that (but they did hire Dombrowski who is a really, really smart ego maniac so what do I really know). Regardless though, either one of those leads to a single conclusion, this guy will NEVER recover from this. Whether ownership lets him go now or later or whether he chooses to leave of his own accord at some future date, the loss of a homegrown, generational talent like Betts over 2 additional years in a career contract (like seriously who cares whether we gave him 10 or 12 years), with his larger than life charisma for basically pocket change, is the end of the Bloom experiment regardless of anything else he pulls off (based on that trade though, it's very likely that other teams will simply come to the Red Sox to raid their talent thinking it's open season and knowing they can't win without getting at least 2 decent pitchers [like #2 or #3 level starters]). Anything he does will always be second guessed now (did anyone see the draft...I wasn't overly enthusiastic with our picks, were you?), so as a lifelong fan who finally watched this team and organization become something special in 2004, I think ownership really has no alternative but to move on from this guy. Cutting ties now may be really hard and may look bad, but the loss of Betts is already doing that and firing Bloom would at least recognize the hiring mistake and help the fans start the healing process. While I doubt that the Sox brass will actually do this, especially this quickly, this is a bad team now with no chips to use to obtain the pitching they need. 2020 is definitely lost (truthfully I don't really care about 2020 as the season is royally screwed up anyway because of COVID), but take a look folks, 2021 is not going to be any better (it may be worse) and the only saving grace of COVID-19 might be that Martinez won't opt out at the end of this year, but this is does remain a risk as he and Betts were close and why would he want to be part of a team that's going to be rebuilding for the next 4 or 5 years.

I appreciate anyone who takes the time to read this. Everything in this post is based solely on my opinion, which I sincerely hope I am completely wrong about and I know there are those out there that may disagree with my conclusions. I think though if you really take an objective approach to what the Betts trade did to this organization, you'll see many of my opinions and conclusions are probably close to what reality looks like both now and into the next several years. Let's just hope (if they don't replace Bloom) that he doesn't try to move Devers for pitching help in an effort to band aid the bad situation he created (I don't see anyone else on that team that would yield pitching in line with what we need except for Devers and Bogey and Bogey's pretty locked up with a good long term contract so I don't think he would be traded no matter what). Everyone else, including JBJ and Benny, just won't get anything decent back. Moving on from Bloom and recognizing the reality of what's happened now (like right now) would allow the team to stop with the junk pitcher signings so that we can start bringing up the few guys in the minors that they do consider future major league starters (even if they are #4,#5, or emergency type guys and even if they think they're a year or two away). If we do that we may find one that surprises us by either developing faster than anticipated or showing stuff better than was projected, and we can get them some experience in a throw away season to help accelerate the rebuilding process versus trotting out guys that we already know can't pitch in the top (or even bottom) of the rotation based upon the fact that they've been released and/or remain unsigned in the open market even now.