It has become a well-choreographed routine at this point, an annual harbinger of the fall. And so it was again on Monday.
Red Sox officials sat behind a table at Fenway Park with the requisite somber expressions and vowed the team would improve as they took questions from reporters following another season without a postseason berth.
Three bottles of the team’s official water sat in front of them, labels carefully turned toward the television cameras.
Accountability is for others, so ownership again sent team president Sam Kennedy to take the heat alongside manager Alex Cora.
Craig Breslow joined the group this year as the latest data-driven chief baseball officer who went to Yale and has the complete faith of the organization.
Breslow, to his credit, was plain-spoken and direct when asked about the 81-81 season.
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“We didn’t reach our goal,” he said. “Our goal every year should be to contend for a division title, to poise ourselves for a deep playoff run. And with that as the standard here, we fell short. There’s no dancing around that. We need to be better.”
There was more optimism than previous years given some of the strides taken in player development and the improvement of the major league rotation.
But the baseline facts are hard to ignore:
▪ The Sox are a combined 57 games out of first place the last three seasons and three games under .500 at home.
▪ They are one of 10 teams not to have a playoff appearance since 2021. Their peers include perennial stumblebums such as the Athletics, Angels, Pirates, Rockies, and White Sox.
▪ The Sox led the American League with 115 errors, which resulted in 95 unearned runs.
▪ The payroll, highest in the game when they won the 2018 World Series, has shrunk steadily since and was 11th this season.
Breslow spoke about improving the defense, balancing a lineup that was too lefthanded, remaking the bullpen with more strike throwers, and further improving the rotation.
That will take a combination of moves — trades and free agent signings among them. Breslow agreed with the idea that no player on the roster should be untouchable.
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“Everything has to be on the table,” he said. “I think to position ourselves otherwise could potentially eliminate a possibility.
“Now the reality is, oftentimes, values don’t match up where it makes sense to trade someone that we believe is going to be a superstar here for a really long time. But I think to approach a conversation and take people off the table just doesn’t make sense given our need to improve the product.”
Breslow needs to get this offseason right and trigger what could be a period of success for the Sox.
The clock is ticking. His three predecessors — Chaim Bloom, Dave Dombrowski, and Ben Cherington — lasted an average of four years on the job. Dombrowski was fired less than a year after the Sox won the 2018 World Series.
“My hope is that the message that we’re providing today is pretty unified and pretty clear that it’s time to deliver the team that is capable of winning the AL East [and] making a deep playoff run,” Breslow said.
For all the talk of wanting to win, Kennedy dodged questions about increasing the payroll to help accomplish that.
He claimed that refusing to discuss the payroll was a competitive advantage, which was never the case back when the Sox made it clear they would spend to win championships.
“I can assure you that the feeling is that our fans have been through a lot,” Kennedy said. “They’ve been patient, and it’s time to get back where we belong. That’s our commitment, to do everything we can.”
We’ll see if “everything we can” creates a commitment that ranks with the Astros, Dodgers, Mets, Phillies, and Yankees, who all made the playoffs this season.
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As for ticket prices, Kennedy said dynamic pricing sets the cost and that changes based on demand.
“So I can’t tell you overall where ticket prices will be for 2025,” he said.
But don’t the Sox have the ability to set levels for some portion of the seats?
“We set certain levels for some portion of our tickets that are season tickets,” Kennedy said. “Some categories there will stay flat. Some will go up, and we’ll see where that average number ends up.”
The Sox averaged 35,994 fans in 2019. The average was 32,839 this season. Their product is losing popularity.
Peter Abraham can be reached at peter.abraham@globe.com. Follow him @PeteAbe.