| After the crash, Red Sox face unsettled future | 09.29.11 at 3:33 pm ET |

David Ortiz, on the cusp of free agency, is one of several Red Sox who is staring at an uncertain future. (AP)
BALTIMORE — About a month ago, as the Red Sox were breezing towards what seemed a certain postseason berth, a team employee was asked what might happen if the Sox ever went consecutive seasons without reaching the playoffs.
“Oh, we’d all be fired,” the employee said matter of factly. “Every one of us would be out of here.”
There was some hyperbole in the statement, but it wasn’t meant entirely as a joke that flew in the face of reality. In certain markets, the idea that teams will go through down years is taken as accepted fact. A pair of postseason misses is taken as an acceptable cost of doing business given the need, occasionally, to turn over rosters and replenish talent.
Not so in the universes of the Yankees and Red Sox. The occasional postseason miss is one thing — the Yankees, for instance, understood that a year like 2008, when they missed the playoffs, would have to happen every now and again, just as the Sox front office has long maintained that reaching the postseason seven or eight times out of every 10 years is a reasonable standard of account.
But missing in back-to-back seasons? That’s another matter entirely for teams that must (to appropriate a phrase from author Seth Mnookin) feed the monster. There are demanding constituencies — the need to feed TV ratings and satisfy sponsorship communities as well as fan bases that have come to view the postseason as a preseason birthright — that create pressures to demonstrate the commitment to respond to any failure to reach the postseason.
The Red Sox have responded boldly in the past to disappointment. After their painful Game 7 loss in the 2007 ALCS, the team fired manager Grady Little, traded for Curt Schilling, nearly traded Manny Ramirez for Alex Rodriguez and signed free agent Keith Foulke. After missing the playoffs in 2006, the team committed over $200 million to the acquisitions of Daisuke Matsuzaka, J.D. Drew and Julio Lugo. Last year’s postseason miss served as the prelude to a pair of blockbuster deals, the trade for Adrian Gonzalez and the signing of Carl Crawford.
But what could the action/reaction cycle hold for a team that misses the playoffs in two straight years? There is no precedent upon which to base a prediction.
It is in that environment that the Red Sox, in a sense, face an offseason minefield, in which the future of no one can be taken for granted following a 7-20 record over the final month that saw the Sox’ colossal nine-game lead turn into an unprecedented failure.
As an organization, the Sox have featured remarkable stability under the stewardship of principal owner John Henry, chairman Tom Werner and CEO Larry Lucchino. Since 2003, the Sox have had one general manager (setting aside the brief sabbatical of GM Theo Epstein following the 2005 season) who has been paired for eight seasons with the same manager, Terry Francona.
But given the way the 2011 season came to its startling conclusion, and the fact that the Sox have now missed the postseason for consecutive years, nothing can be taken as a given. Ultimately, when the dust settles and there is a time to step back for a critical assessment of what transpired at both the ownership and baseball operations levels, the Sox may take the broader view, conclude that they have, in fact, been in the postseason for six of the last nine years (while coming painfully close to making it a seventh time this year) and decide that radical change is unnecessary.
Even so, the thoroughness of a collapse annihilates the possibility of sentimentality. Not that the Sox have been guided in recent years by emotion over logic, but the completeness of their failure means that the team effectively has been separated from the 2004 and 2007 World Series winners — and even the 2008 team that nearly came back in the ALCS — that refused to back down in the face of impossible odds. The 2011 Red Sox, in dramatic contrast, are the team that turned certain success into failure.
“We’ll have to take a very close look at everything that’s not right, we have to fix, and that includes the whole organization,” said Epstein. “I guess if there’s any silver-lining from it, it’s that you can’t look the other way. If there’s anything that’s not exactly the way you want it, you have to address it now. That process is gonna be difficult, but it’s something we have to do.
“I think after every year you have to look at where you are as an organization, and not just the current season that just ended, but trends, where you’re going in the future,” added Epstein. “It’s our responsibility to do that every year. When we have a month like we just had, it will only intensify that effort, that’s for sure.”
It will take time for the Sox to digest what happened and to develop a roadmap for where to direct the franchise from this point. The organization had been unable to conduct its typical September offseason planning meetings, instead being left to concentrate all its energies on internal evaluations and efforts to right a flailing 2011 team rather thank looking ahead to 2012.
And so, the path forward has yet to be defined. But it could take the Sox in any number of directions — some of which could represent smaller-scale alterations at the margins, some of which could take the Sox in dramatically different directions. Wherever they head, however, it is clear where the team will be coming from. In two separate stretches of the season — 12 games at the beginning, and 27 games at the end — they performed in a fashion that fell shockingly short of expectations.
What to conclude?
“The way we were playing this month, that’s not a playoff team,” said David Ortiz. “Not how we play. Not how we play.”
Here are a few of the individuals who face the greatest uncertainty as the offseason commences:
TERRY FRANCONA
Francona is at the end of his three-year contract. The Sox now have 10 days to decide whether the exercise a two-year team option on the manager who was at the head of a team that won its first two World Series since World War I.
In his appearance on The Big Show on Wednesday, prior to his team’s season finale, Francona declined to discuss the matter.
“It’s not a time for that,” Francona said. “They have 10 days when the season’s over to pick up my options. I told them when I signed this contract years back that I would never talk about it during the season and I’ve tried to keep my word.”
Interestingly, whereas he’s often been quick to mention his passion for being the manager of the Red Sox when offered the forum in which to do so (including earlier in September), in his Big Show interview, he declined even to express that sentiment.
Asked if he wanted to remain in Boston, Francona said simply, “What I worry about is us winning games and if I spend any amount of energy or time thinking about my job, shame on me.”
Undoubtedly, the final month wore on Francona. His team’s struggles were certainly the primary cause of that, but his undefined job status beyond 2011 did not make his life any easier.
And so, for the first time in his eight-year tenure in Boston, it remains to be seen whether the Red Sox want Francona back, or whether he wants to to back.
DAVID ORTIZ
Even in happier times in 2011, when it looked as if the Sox were going to cruise into the playoffs, Ortiz’ future represented a fascinating topic. Even as he was performing at a level of one of the top sluggers in the AL, it seemed fair to expect that the team’s talks with Ortiz once the offseason arrived would represent one of the most complicated negotiations the team had faced with one of its own free agents.
Ortiz, after all, is a franchise icon, a man who links the Sox to their two glorious championships for what he accomplished in 2004 and 2007 but who also remained tremendously productive through this year. His status with the franchise, more than any other player, will necessarily involve conversations at the ownership level rather than just being a baseball operations matter.
In some respects, he and Francona are the two individuals whose future status with the organization may have changed the most over the season’s final month. Because the Sox have experienced a rupture with their success of the previous decade, the value of Ortiz’ role in those may be discounted as the Sox weigh whether or not to re-sign one of the greatest sluggers in franchise history.
For his part, Ortiz had little to say about his future in the minutes following the end of the Sox’ season.
“That’s something that I can’t control. … I don’t care about that right now,” Ortiz said of whether he would be back. “My life and career is all set. That’s the last thing I’m worried about right now. My goal right now is trying to win this game, go to the playoffs, take things to the next level. We have a lot of fans, a lot of people counting on us. We just left them behind. This is a situation that’s going to be in our heads for a while.”
JONATHAN PAPELBON
No Red Sox’ free agent status has been more anticipated in 2011 — and in some respects, for years — than Jonathan Papelbon, in part because the inevitability of his reaching free agency had been apparent for years. He’s never made a secret of two things. First, he has loved every moment he’s spent in the Red Sox organization. Secondly, he’s seeking a contract that reflects the status of one of the top closers in the game.
Yet his final moment of 2011 — and perhaps of his Red Sox career — was that of a pitcher who failed to safely escort his team’s lead to victory. Needing just one out to extend the Sox’ season, Papelbon allowed a pair of hard doubles to tie the game before Robert Andino‘s soft liner could not be caught in left by Carl Crawford.
Papelbon insisted that the season-ending blown save would not define his career in Boston, but at the same time, given the circumstances of how his season ended, he had little interest in looking ahead to the free agent process that he has long anticipated.
“I’m not really thinking about that right now. I can’t sit there and worry about that right now,” said Papelbon. “I think this organization is obviously an organization I want to play for. I have to let the offseason dictate that and whatever happens, happens.”
JASON VARITEK
The word that the Sox captain — who was limping in the clubhouse after the game, three days after being hit on the knee by a pitch, an injury that rendered him unavailable for the final series of the season — used repeatedly to describe himself was “numb.” As such, the future was not on his mind.
“I don’t even want to talk about me and situations right now,” said Varitek. “I don’t think it’s appropriate.”
But Varitek, for the second time in three offseasons, will once again be a free agent, and it will once again be an open question whether he will be back with the only major league club for whom he has ever played. Like fellow catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Varitek had a terrible April, assembled a strong performance during the summer months, then had a horrible September.
MARCO SCUTARO
The Red Sox hold a $6 million option on Scutaro for next season; if they do not exercise it, they will be on the hook for a $1.5 million buyout. It would seem nearly unthinkable that Scutaro would exercise a $3 million player option. So the question will become whether the Sox pay the $4.5 million difference between the buyout and team option to bring the shortstop back.
He finished the year with a terrific September (marred by a single, terrible baserunning mistake) that left him with a career-best .299 average and an OPS that also neared his career high level of 2009. Scutaro was uncertain what the future holds for him.
“You’re asking me? I just work here. Ask the big boss.”
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