Last week’s season-ending sweep at the hands of the New York Yankees was probably the worst way this Boston Red Sox season could have ended.
And Red Sox President and CEO Sam Kennedy wasn’t hiding from that fact during the team’s end-of-season press conference Monday.
“As painful as the first half of the season was, and as sort of magical and historic as the second half of the summer became, the way it ended Wednesday night in New York was painful and deeply disappointing to all of us,” Kennedy said while seated next to Sox Chief Baseball Officer Craig Breslow and Manager Chad Tracy.
After their incredible turnaround from a disastrous start to the season to a scalding stretch in mid-summer, the team’s run ended just about how a more jaded fan might have expected. Meanwhile, the Boston’s brass is committing to doing better.
“‘We didn’t capitalize on our summer success,’ I think is this feeling that’s echoing in my head,” Breslow said. “And ultimately, we fell short of the goals that we set out to accomplish.”
But Breslow also said he didn’t want that to overshadow the accomplishments of the players this season. Players had to step up in the wake of teammates, like Garrett Crochet and Roman Anthony, missing large chunks of the season due to injuries. Plus, they had to overcome the shock to the system of having previous manager Alex Cora let go after a 10-17 start to the year.
All told, 87 wins and a playoff berth wasn’t too shabby under those conditions. But the Red Sox aim to play deep into October, not just late September.
Tracy took flak for how he handled his pitching rotation against the Yankees and for pulling starters Payton Tolle and Sonny Gray fairly early into the night each game. But he took responsibility for those calls, saying that he made them based off of factors like what was going on in the game and who was in the bullpen.
“Don’t think for one second I didn’t go back over the last couple of days, as I always do, and replay the game in [my] head and think about things,” Tracy said. “And think through it and decide, 'Would you have done anything different?’ You don’t go into anything with regret, you have to act.”
After a year that Tracy described as “a wild ride,” the new manager has had a little time to breathe now that the season is over. But even after leading a comeback squad that made some history in his first season leading a Major League team, Tracy was clear-eyed that the finish wasn’t good enough, even if making the postseason once seemed like a fairy tale.
“Are we proud that we got there based on where we were? 100%,” Tracy said. “Was that the goal? No. The goal was to win the World Series, that’s the goal of every single team going into every year. And only one of them is going to accomplish it. And if you don’t, you dust yourself off and start working on doing it again next year.”
