Red Sox Ownership Continues To Insult Our Intelligence

Tone deaf doesn’t even begin to describe the press conference that took place on Monday in Fort Myers.  Red Sox ownership really thinks that us Boston people are the typical Massholes who have been famously portrayed in commercials and SNL sketches.  After all these years they don’t understand that we’re actually smart baseball fans who see right through their bullshit.  

We know how good Mookie Betts is.  We’ve watched him for six years.  We also know how good Alex Verdugo is to an extent because we have the internet, which has these cool websites where you can actually look at a player’s statistics throughout their career.  For example, Mookie Betts is a four-time All-Star, four-time Gold Glover, and former MVP who hasn’t hit less than 20 home runs since his rookie year in 2015.  Alex Verdugo is a zero-time All-Star and zero-time Gold Glover who hit a career-high 12 homers last year after taking three seasons to finally play more than 100 games.  He played 106, which is 30 less than Mookie’s career-low of 136.  

The internet can also tell us about someone’s personal life, which can lead us to stories about Verdugo being involved in a couple disturbing incidents during his teenage years as a Dodgers prospect.  You won’t find any wrinkles in Mookie’s character though.  He’s been one of the more level-headed and mature superstars in all of sports.

With this information, we can then use basic logic to evaluate Mookie Betts’ make-up vs. that of Alex Verdugo, and find that Mookie dominates in every category on and off the field.  Hitting, fielding, durability, character, personality, maturity, etc. 

But sure John Henry.  Look us in the eye and tell us that you traded a franchise player for a couple prospects and a guy with more question marks than career home runs because you loved the return.  That’ll go over well.

Here are some of the blatant lies and insultingly disingenuous statements from Monday’s awkward press conference.

John Henry:

“Before Tom, Sam, or I ever dreamed of owning a Major League Baseball club, we were baseball fans, like you.  I grew up a fan of the St. Louis Cardinals. My favorite player was Stan Musial. My heart would have been broken if Stan the Man had ever been traded away – for any reason.  Your parents or your grandparents surely felt the same way about Ted Williams or Yaz.”

Is this guy really trying to be relatable to the modern day baseball fan by bringing up his hardcore Cardinals allegiance in the 1940’s and 50’s?  Next.

“Some of you no doubt felt the same way in 2004 when we traded Nomar, who like Mookie was a hugely popular, homegrown player.  All of us in the organization hoped we could avoid ever having to go through something like that again. But most clubs face similar dilemmas from time to time.”

Nomar was 30 and was on the decline, not to mention Sox fans were beginning to have mixed feelings about his personality.  Mookie is 27, in the prime of his career, and is one of the most beloved sports figures in Boston.  Next.

“We felt we could not sit on our hands and lose him next offseason without getting value in return to help us on our path forward.”

Again, the “value in return” comments are bullshit.

Then Sam Kennedy decides this is a great time to try to sell us their overpriced tickets:

“I mentioned publicly the other day that we are pacing behind in ticket sales.  There’s been a big focus on affordability.  There’s actually a misconception still in the market that tickets aren’t available, that every single game at Fenway Park is sold out.  That’s not the case.  There are tickets available for our games in April and May.  We have affordable family options, $99 for a family of four which includes four tickets, food and beverage,” he said. “We understand the commitment that our fan makes and every single dollar that our fans invest into tickets, food and beverage at Fenway Park goes back into baseball operations.  It’s important that our fans understand that connection.”

So the Sox couldn’t afford Mookie because we didn’t buy enough $10 Miller Lights last year.  Got it.

And one more lie about the motives of the trade for good measure:

“There are clearly certain advantages by resetting and getting under,” Kennedy said. “But we’ve tried to be clear that this was not exclusively about the CBT and getting under that CBT threshold.  There would have been other ways to do that.  You don’t trade Mookie Betts to get under the CBT.  We traded Mookie Betts and David Price to get substantial value for the return.”

There’s only one explanation for being this out of touch.  They think we’re stupid.  The Casey Affleck skit at Dunkin, the new Hyundai “smaht pahk” commercial.  They think that’s us.  But you can only treat intelligent people like idiots for so long before they expose you, and that’s exactly what’s happening in front of our eyes.

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