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It was a bet that paid off.
After back-to-back American League East titles that gave way to hasty postseason exits, there was no real fork in the road. The Red Sox never had any serious discussions about whether they might need to change the mix with their homegrown core — for instance, the team turned away the Dodgers’ offseason overtures about the possibility of a Jackie Bradley Jr. for Yasiel Puig deal — and instead focused on getting more out of a group that had gotten wiped out in the ALDS in back-to-back years.
The managerial and coaching staff changes of last fall were a major part of that alteration. But so, too, was the willingness to keep spending, to add J.D. Martinez in the offseason and to take on additional salary with Steve Pearce, Nathan Eovaldi, and Ian Kinsler in the regular season to push the team’s payroll to record levels.
The Red Sox enter the World Series with a payroll that will be more than $40 million beyond what the Dodgers, a financial behemoth, have spent this year. The team has blown its way to the third and highest tier of luxury tax spending, investing more than $237 million in payroll (as calculated for luxury tax purposes). No team in baseball has spent more, or even anything close, this year. No Red Sox team has ever plowed so much money into its major league team.
Not all of those investments have yielded solid or even any returns, as evidenced by the releases of Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval in the last two years. Given those disappointments, it wouldn’t have been shocking for the team to hold back on further investments in the free agent market, particularly at a time when the team’s young core is starting to get huge raises via arbitration.
Yet despite some instances of disappointing yields, the team reached the conclusion that it should continue to invest.
“[Red Sox principal owner and Globe owner John Henry] and [Red Sox chairman Tom Werner] made the affirmative decision to invest even more this year given the makeup of this team, given the success that we’ve had, given the desire to push past the American League East championship and to go deeper in October. That’s a credit to ownership,” said Red Sox president Sam Kennedy. “The ability to generate revenues and reinvest those revenues into the product is a responsibility that we have. That’s been the formula since 2002.”
While president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski and the baseball operations department make the calls on personnel — whom to sign, whom to draft, whom to trade for, etc. — the larger-picture decisions on resource commitments occur at the ownership level. There wasn’t a single conversation in which the Red Sox green-lighted the 2018 level of spending, in which the owners signed off on making the trades to go past the $237 million luxury tax threshold. Instead, Kennedy said, the decision occurred organically in the steady dialogue that occurs between Dombrowski and Henry, Werner, and Kennedy.
“There’s a constant conversation going on about appropriate investment levels,” Kennedy said. “That’s constant and ongoing. We effectively live together, in the season, especially. You get to June and July, you get to the trade deadline, and there’s daily conversation around investment levels, what the market may look like, where we look like vis-à-vis the CBT, and overall investment levels.
“John and Tom are very, very active in the day-to-day of these conversations, whether it’s a business opportunity we’re working on, signing players, setting a budget. They don’t really opine on this free agent or that free agent when it comes to the baseball performance end of it. They have strong opinions and voice those opinions, but Dave and his team make the call on the personnel side. But in terms of setting the template for hopefully having success, that comes from John and Tom.”
The decision to commit to the largest payroll in franchise history comes one year after the Red Sox limboed their way under the luxury tax threshold in 2017 to reset their tax rate (from what would have been a baseline level of 50 percent for money spent beyond $197 million in 2018 to 20 percent, with increasing tax rates for spending beyond $217 million and $237 million) and to minimize penalties.
Kennedy couldn’t say whether the team would have felt comfortable spending to the point that it did in 2018 had it not gotten under the threshold in 2017. But he did say that he felt the team had benefited this offseason from the fact that it was willing to spend past the threshold at a time when other large-market teams — the Dodgers, Yankees, and Cubs, among others — were working diligently to stay under the threshold, something that limited the number of suitors for free agents such as Martinez.
“The CBA is obviously in five-year increments.” Kennedy said. “We do look at our business in five-year increments. That helps inform decision-making as you go forward. We sort of have surveyed the landscape. We think we have a feel of where certain teams are going to end up. Of course, sometimes we’re surprised by who does what. That’s the gamesmanship that goes on. But we had a pretty good feeling of who was where. That helps as you’re planning payroll decisions.”
Clearly, the Sox proved capable of making the decisions necessary to build a championship-caliber team in 2018, regardless of the outcome of the World Series. But what about beyond?
The team is realizing the fruits of years spent building a homegrown powerhouse, with the lineup composed chiefly of players who were drafted or signed as amateurs anywhere from three to 10 years ago. In many ways, this is the most homegrown of the Red Sox’ four World Series teams, since the Red Sox had to endure agonizing growing pains with last place finishes in 2014 and 2015, along with the brief playoff runs of 2016 and 2017, as part of the team’s development curve.
It’s hard to construct a roster that features homegrown players behind the plate (Christian Vazquez), at short (Xander Bogaerts), third (Rafael Devers), left (Andrew Benintendi), center (Jackie Bradley Jr.), and right (Mookie Betts). Players who have been young and cheap and controllable remain under team control for now, but free agency for Bogaerts (after 2019) and Betts and Bradley (2020) is visible on the horizon. The current group won’t remain together forever, a reality that loomed in the background with the major commitments to add Martinez and David Price via free agency, and Chris Sale and Craig Kimbrel via trade.
“It’s not the time to talk about it, but we’ll have hard decisions given the makeup of this team as we move forward,” Kennedy said. “There are so many talented players. There are going to be hard decisions. But right now, we’re glad that we have all of them.”
The Red Sox want to enjoy this moment, yet they also want to avoid repeating a rebuild cycle on the other side of it. After so much work to create a flourishing young group of position players, the team hopes to keep at least some elements of it intact beyond their eligibility for free agency — with MVP-favorite Betts representing a particularly high priority moving forward.
“There’s nothing more important in baseball operations than drafting really, really well, developing well, and then hopefully retaining some players who you draft and develop as superstars,” Kennedy said. “To that end, John Henry, Tom Werner, Dave Dombrowksi, yours truly have made it crystal clear to Mookie that specifically we hope he is a member of the Boston Red Sox for his career. We want nothing more than that.
“We also understand he has to survey the landscape, and both sides need to agree that a fair outcome is doable. I hope that is the case. There couldn’t be a better representative of the Boston Red Sox. On the field speaks for itself, but off the field, he’s such a wonderful guy, such a great leader. He represents everything we want. But we also recognize it will be a difficult discussion at some point just given that you want to have a whole team. So, we’ll see when we get there, but we’re going to do everything in our power to keep him.”
Kennedy emphasized that, no matter what the future, the team has the resources to continue to invest, to remain committed to fielding a competitive team. But the most valuable asset of a team will remain its top young talent, players whose relatively high production and low salaries permit the supplementary moves in free agency and trades.
Right now, the Sox are seeing the fruits of a robust farm system cultivated over years, one that not only supplied several starters but also gave the team the flexibility to spend on Price and Martinez, even when absorbing the deals for Ramirez, Sandoval, and Rusney Castillo. To replicate that in the future won’t be easy — something of which the team is aware, and that encourages the team to appreciate what it has right now.
“I see the landscape being difficult for the Red Sox and a lot of other teams,” Kennedy said. “By definition, when you have these players you draft, develop, and become stars, the marketplace is the marketplace, and you’re going to have certain restraints on payroll. But I can tell you the Red Sox will be committed to continuing to invest. I do believe that we can continue to be competitive as we move forward. But this is a special window of time.”
Alex Speier can be reached at alex.speier@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @alexspeier.