The Red Sox don’t have much to do this offseason.
Only hire a replacement for Chaim Bloom, overhaul the roster (again), and reestablish themselves as a legitimate force in the league.
It’s a bit like saying “all” a broken-down car needs to run is a new engine, tires, and brakes.
While giving themselves what should be an extreme makeover, the Red Sox should also make re-endearing themselves to their fans a priority.
Last February, amidst growing perception that the team was losing relevance with its fanbase, team president and CEO Sam Kennedy stood in the Florida sunshine and declared, “If we’re competitive, it’ll take care of any lack of interest.”
Days away from their third last-place finish in four years, they now have to work even harder to become relevant and worth fans’ while again.
Here are seven ways — ranging from silly to serious — that the Red Sox can get their fans to come back next year and every season after:
1. Roof, roof, roof for the home team
It’s been a long season of bad weather.
A whopping 10.43 inches of rain fell on Boston in July (the month averages less than four), and by the end of the month, the National Weather Service announced that Boston weathered more than 20 inches of rainfall over a three-month period, the second-highest total since their records began in 1872.
By now, the total hours of Fenway rain delays may be triple digits. The Red Sox had at least four games postponed and turned into doubleheaders, including two during this month’s four-game series with the Yankees. That week, weather warnings for the area included multiple Flood Watches, a Tropical Storm watch, and a Hurricane Local Statement.
Could some kind of clear, retractable top be added to America’s oldest ballpark? A fancy bubble setup may cost more money in the short term, but in the long run, updating the fancy drainage system, all those bags of the drying agent they use to sop up the field, and additional pay to staff the stadium really adds up.
2. Bark in the park
Several MLB and minor league teams have dog-friendly games throughout the season, including the Red Sox’s Triple-A affiliate WooSox, who had several “Bark in the Park” days this year. Why doesn’t their parent team open their gates to four-legged friends at least once?
3. Empty the bank for Shohei Ohtani
Sure, he won’t pitch at all in 2024, and injuries will be an ever-present concern until the end of his career, but if the Red Sox want more Boston butts in those ancient Fenway seats, the second coming of Babe Ruth is the most obvious way to make it happen. The team that signs Ohtani is guaranteed a sold-out home opener, the next game, and probably every one thereafter.
4. Earlier starts
Games are faster this year thanks to the pitch clock, but 7:10 p.m. starts are still too late for young children to get the full ballpark experience. If the Red Sox want to draw in the next generation of fans, they should consider some earlier contests. They visited several teams this season who got things started just around 6:35 (Orioles) or 6:40 p.m. (Rays, Twins) local time, and even that half-hour or so makes a difference.
5. Expand concession options for the dietary-restricted
The Red Sox are one of the biggest markets and richest organizations in professional sports, but their ballpark concession options leave a lot to be desired for those with dietary restrictions. Compared to more than 40 places to purchase meat hot dogs at Fenway, there are two Kosher vending machines, often not fully stocked. The ballpark used to offer veggie burgers and portobello burgers, but they seem to have disappeared after 2017.
Even the Oakland A’s, ranked the worst concessions in MLB by Thrillist last year, offer a veggie burger at the crumbling Coliseum.
A 1994 poll by the Vegetarian Research Group found that barely 1 percent of Americans were vegetarian, but younger generations are making the country more health-conscious, focused on animal welfare and environmental impact. A Statista survey of more than 50,000 between 2021-22 showed that 7 percent of adults in the United States aged 18-39 and 6 percent of age 40-49 consider themselves vegetarian, compared to only 2 percent of those between the ages of 50-64. This spring, their research department found that 14 percent of the country’s consumers following a meat-free diet, spurring the rapidly-growing industry: a $2.33 billion meat-substitute market and $3.6 billion milk-substitute market, with plant-based foods sales increasing 7 percent between January 1, 2022 and 2023.
Clearly, even one more health-conscious, plant-based option at the ballpark wouldn’t hurt.
6. Lower ticket prices
Know what fans love? Getting upcharged for a decreasingly appealing product.
As of Monday, Baseball Reference listed Fenway attendance at 2,603,447. With two home games left, it’s likely that the Red Sox will surpass last year’s total of 2,625,089.
This is only a victory in the loosest sense of the word. 2022 saw Fenway’s worst attendance under the current ownership, the lowest number since 2000. If the Red Sox eke out a better attendance record this season, it should come with not one, but two asterisks. The first due to the abysmal weather, which ensured that while the club may have sold as many tickets as listed, they certainly didn’t have that many spectators in the seats. Endless rain delays, suspensions, and postponements, which turned night games into the daytime halves of doubleheaders, resulted in a lackluster showing.
The second caveat is that too often, fans of the visiting teams such as the Blue Jays, Dodgers, and Astros padded total ticket sales and filled the ballpark; it often felt like there were more visitors than hometown folk in the crowd. Fenway has always been a tourist attraction; by definition, being MLB’s oldest ballpark isn’t exactly breaking news. The difference is, there didn’t used to be enough room for visitors, because the home crowd filled the joint.
The Red Sox are about to have their third last-place finish in four seasons, yet they’ve raised ticket prices in each of the last three years. It’s going to be hard to sell this winter.
7. Go hard this offseason and be consistent about winning
Last winter, the Red Sox gave Rafael Devers the largest contract in franchise history by a mile and made a few strong additions, headlined by Chris Martin, who’s been one of the best relievers in the game this season.
They also lost out on several free-agent targets with whom they could’ve been more aggressive, such as Zach Eflin, who chose an identical offer from the Tampa Bay Rays. His three-year, $40 million contract makes Eflin the highest-paid free agent in Rays history.
Which isn’t to say that the Red Sox should go throwing money around, only that it’s pretty embarrassing to lose a very affordable, solid arm to one of the cheapest teams in baseball. Eflin enters Tuesday with a career-best 3.44 ERA across career highs in starts (30), innings pitched (172 2/3), and strikeouts (182). He’d lead Boston’s starting rotation in all of those metrics, most by a wide margin.
The Red Sox can claim they’re always trying to win, but their actions (and inaction) over the past several years suggest otherwise. They fired the economical Ben Cherington and let Dave Dombrowski spend big, then tightened the purse strings once again with Bloom. Presumably, whoever replaces him will be instructed to do what it takes to put Boston back on top, and everyone knows, contending requires some spending.
But when the next luxury tax bill comes due, it’ll be tempting to swing the pendulum back to pinching pennies and/or trading generational talents. Past precedent suggests that doing so will only land the Red Sox exactly where they are right now: desperately trying to right the same ship they’ve sunk and raised from the depths several times over the last two decades.
While lowering ticket prices will certainly turn some heads, consistently fielding a home team worth watching would ensure they don’t have to. (They still should, though.)
Story by Gabrielle Starr, Boston Herald.
