00:00Sean McAdam, who we love his writing, over at MassLive, he wrote a very interesting article.
00:07Actually, he's written a bunch of things that are interesting, but one of my favorite parts of it was in
00:11his article,
00:12some things I think he talked about John Henry and his increased visibility this season.
00:16So he said, let's get Sean on. I got to hear more about this.
00:18Sean, thanks for joining the show, my friend.
00:21Pleasure to be on, guys. How are you?
00:22Hey, doing really good.
00:24First of all, this has got to be a weird season to cover this team, correct?
00:29I mean, there's days where we come on here and I'm just like, I don't know how much worse it
00:33can get.
00:34And then they find a new hole and then they find a new hole.
00:36Then you get a weird weekend like this where you're like, eh, maybe they're okay.
00:39What's it been like covering the 2026 Red Sox?
00:43Yeah, strange and not very entertaining from a baseball standpoint.
00:49You know, we don't, as you guys know, we don't root for the teams we cover.
00:54But I think if you talk to most people who are on the beat, you'd rather have a team in
00:59competition and playing well for any number of reasons.
01:03More people are interested.
01:05So more people are reading you.
01:07Players are in a better mood.
01:09It's more relevant.
01:10All of that stuff.
01:12And you can't find a team that has been less relevant in 2026 than your Boston Red Sox so far
01:20through two and a half months of the season.
01:23And, you know, it doesn't look – and I was one of those guys thinking, like, eh, I'm not ready
01:28to completely write them off for the longest time.
01:31I thought there would be one of those stretches where, you know, they'd win eight out of ten and inch
01:38closer to 500.
01:39And then once you're near 500 in 2026, you're a de facto wild card contender.
01:46But they can't seem to get out of their own way.
01:48I'm still trying to come to grips with the fact that Friday and Saturday represented not just their first series
01:58win at home, but the first time – first series win at home since early April.
02:04But the first time since that same time span that they had won consecutive games at home.
02:12That's hard to do or hard not to do.
02:14It is, Sean. As a matter of fact, that Tampa series, the final game was an early game, obviously, and
02:22it ended, like, during our show.
02:23So we got on around, like, 430, and, like, we immediately had full phone lines.
02:28It was a funeral for that team.
02:29Like, I mean, it was just – people couldn't wait to pile on to them.
02:33And I kind of at that point was like, I don't know how you can recover from this.
02:37Now, listen, it was nice to have a little taste this week, but the one thing that we've been talking
02:41about is, you know, we had Buster Only on talking about how ownership was now calling people trying to get,
02:49like, a bat in here.
02:50And maybe that's changed because Sam Kennedy said they were pivoting.
02:53It's just an absolute mess.
02:55But when you talk about ownership, this article you wrote where it sounds like John Henry is more visible right
03:01now.
03:02Like, what do you – like, what's going on?
03:04Why do you believe he's there?
03:05And how weird is it that he's there, but he's still not speaking to the media?
03:11Yeah, he's still not speaking to the media on the record.
03:15He was in New York at Yankee Stadium weekend before last, and I chatted with him for a while.
03:22So did a couple of other reporters, but it was all sort of off the record, on background, and just
03:30sort of generalities.
03:32As to the motivation behind being more visible, I don't know, frankly.
03:39I mean, John is pretty inscrutable, even in his – in the best of times, and I'm not sure what
03:46the motivation is.
03:47Maybe part of it is to, you know, provide a definitive pushback to the sell-the-team chance.
03:54That he figures that if he's around a lot and on the field and engaged, then people will stop suggesting
04:03that he's getting ready to sell the team.
04:06And by the way, he's not selling the team.
04:08Spoiler alert.
04:10But it is a little – I'll say this.
04:15We've seen him more on the field, around the ballpark, more in the last two-and-a-half months than
04:23maybe the previous three or four seasons combined.
04:27What the motivation or what the reason is behind that, I really don't know, except that I know, just speaking
04:35briefly to him informally and talking to people around the club,
04:40that he is very frustrated with how things have gone through.
04:45Is that part of the problem?
04:47Like, I'm starting to think about it.
04:48Like, the last two-and-a-half months have sucked, and you've got Conor Falefa saying there was too many
04:53people around at home.
04:55And, like, I mean, do you think that maybe that might be making the players feel a little nervous or
05:01on edge?
05:02I mean, do you think –
05:03Maybe that's the point.
05:03Yeah, because I would say that, you know, his contact with the players is fairly incidental.
05:09He's not in the clubhouse.
05:11He's not coming in after games.
05:14You see him on the field.
05:16It's not as if he's become this nuisance, and he's, like, sticking his face into a game of pepper or
05:24a guy stretching or interrupting them getting ready for games.
05:28And, frankly, I'm not sure how many players on this team know him or have had any real contact with
05:37him.
05:37He's not – it's not like he's omnipresent or that he's yapping away with players, coaches, and a manager.
05:46But he is there more, and I'm always told that he's around more than you think he is in years
05:54past.
05:54And I don't have any reason to doubt that, but he also very carefully limited his exposure, that he wasn't
06:02on the field.
06:04You would see him in his suite watching games.
06:06He'd be in his office during the afternoon.
06:08But for whatever reason, and we could all invest time in trying to guess at why this is, he definitely
06:15is more visible and present this year than he has been in any recent season.
06:22Hey, Sean, it's about a year ago today that the Red Sox traded Rafi Devers to the Giants.
06:29And now reports are that the Giants are open to business in trading Rafi Devers.
06:35Just how would you grade that trade?
06:37What did you think of it at the time, and how do you think that trade has aged up to
06:41this point?
06:42Well, Ted, you know, general managers like to tell you, oh, it was a great trade that helped both teams.
06:48Those were the best trades.
06:49This is a trade that helped neither.
06:52You know, one team unloaded money and what they perceived to be an attitude problem.
07:00By all accounts, Devers has been fairly amenable to what the Giants asked of him.
07:07He played first base for them, which he didn't want to do here.
07:10But all he did was transfer that salary and that underperformance from one team to the other across the coast.
07:21I mean, you know, the Giants are now saddled with whatever's left there, $215 million or $220 million now.
07:29It was $250-something when the trade got made.
07:32So they've eaten up about $30 million of that.
07:35Don't have much to show for it.
07:37And the Red Sox almost have literally nothing to show for it.
07:41They've given away all the parts, some of which they didn't need, some of which they should have held on
07:47to,
07:47like James Tibbs, part of the Dustin May trade, which sort of compounded things.
07:53You end up thinking, well, they've got a young bat here and maybe that could pay off.
07:57And then they turn around and use that to trade for Dustin May, who's horrible for them,
08:02but has a complete game shut up for Cardinals last night.
08:05So, I mean, that's kind of the perfect leftover from this deal.
08:10It's truly a deal that didn't help either side, and it continues to haunt both franchises,
08:18neither of whom have winning records a year later.
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