When a team wins a championship, it’s easy for anyone to think they don’t have to do anything to win again the following season. This is especially true if most of the team will be back, in which case it’s even easier to think that way. For fans, it’s far easier to think so and fall in love with the players that made it possible.
But the reality is that even a championship team can’t stand still. Other teams will make moves in hopes of beating them – and everyone else – in the new season. Players are not the same from one year to the next, and players and teams adjust what they do as well.
The 2019 Boston Red Sox can serve as a solid case study in this subject. While it is still too early to write the epitaph for their 2019 season, that may not be the case for much longer. They simply do not look like a playoff team and have not for most of the season.
To be sure, the Red Sox have teased their fans at times like just over a week ago, when they took care of the Rays and dominated the Yankees. However, each time they have done something like that, they have just as quickly fallen back to earth. The same consistent inconsistency that has dogged them all season has returned, showing this to be a very streaky team. Part of that, however, does not appear to be a big streak whose results they can maintain to get into a playoff position.
Even as good as the offense has been, it has been prone to a number of maddening stretches where they have been unable to hit. They have left men on base in many great opportunities, perhaps best illustrated last Tuesday when they left seven men on base in the last three innings in a 6-5 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays. They have also hurt themselves all year long with baserunning blunders, the most obvious ones ending with being thrown out at third or home but also with less obvious ones like not taking an extra base they should be able to.
The bullpen, while lacking depth, has had plenty of struggles, but isn’t as bad as it has been made out to be. Although Matt Barnes had a rough patch, he appears to have emerged from it and remains a solid reliever overall. The real problem has been in the starting rotation, where only David Price has had anything remotely resembling a decent season. Chris Sale, their $145 million man, has rarely looked good, while Rick Porcello hasn’t looked much better in his contract year. Eduardo Rodriguez has quietly emerged, but the fifth spot in the rotation remains a problem.
All of this is not to say that the Red Sox should have made a number of moves at the recent trade deadline, as many have said. Many selling teams were asking for a very steep price, so the idea may have sounded better in theory than in reality. Rather, the time for them to have made moves was the off-season. Instead, they largely tried to run it back with the same cast this season, and that does not appear to have worked well. Two big signings – Nathan Eovaldi and Steve Pearce – have not worked out at all. Both have missed much of the season due to injury, and when healthy, Pearce has not played well and Eovaldi has been a mixed bag at best.
Essentially, the Red Sox have tried to win with last year’s team. The rest of the league has caught up with them, however, between roster adjustments and players adjusting to what the Red Sox did. Players and coaches surely have not tried to sit still, but with so little change to the roster, we can see how it is very difficult to win again with much the same team. Every season is different.
Certainly, injuries have not helped, but that is not an excuse. The Yankees are well ahead of the Sox in the standings and have been beset with injuries all year long. No team has been as beat up as they have, yet they are still head and shoulders ahead of the Rays and the Red Sox in the AL East. (And they just placed their starting center fielder on the injured list on Sunday, in keeping with the theme, to make it 16 players currently on the injured list.)
While fans expect this team to be in the playoffs and more, 2019 may not end up being a lost season entirely. Michael Chavis has shown he can play at this level and at a new position, while Christian Vazquez has been quite the surprise at the plate and Rafael Devers has started to look like the special player he’s long been thought to potentially be. Matt Barnes has shown he can remain a very good reliever, although it’s unknown if he can really ascend into a closer role. But as much as anything, this team will serve as one more example of why a championship team would do well to not simply come back with the same team.