Should Red Sox Blow Up Latest Roster, Clubhouse Mess?

For the Boston Red Sox, 2015 is feeling suspiciously like 2012. And so, the same question the Red Sox found themselves asking that year is relevant all over again.

Do the Red Sox stay the course and hope against hope, or should they say, "Ah, screw it!" and blow things up?

To be sure, it's not all doom and gloom. As far as any of us can tell, nobody within the Red Sox has hit the panic button. There's also a lot of season left, and Jason Mastrodonato of the Boston Herald has a list of five reasons all is not lost for the Red Sox.

But yeah, all that is pretty much the Lloyd Christmas perspective on the Red Sox's current predicament. It may not all be doom and gloom, but it's mainly doom and gloom.

Through 72 games, the Red Sox are 10 games under .500 at 31-41. That puts them nine games back in the American League East, surely a suboptimal place to be.

So no, this isn't a good Red Sox team. And as per usual whenever there's a bad Red Sox team, wary eyes are being cast toward the clubhouse.

Patrick Semansky/Associated Press

Unlike the Red Sox clubhouses of 2011 and 2012, there are no indications that this year's bunch is entirely dysfunctional. There have been no reports of chicken and beer, nor of a mutiny against manager John Farrell. As the skipper told John Tomase of WEEI.com, his clubhouse has not "run amok."

And yet, the negative buzz is there.

Farrell and lefty starter Wade Miley recently got in a shouting match. Pablo Sandoval just got himself benched for daring to use Instagram while on the john. Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports reported that Hanley Ramirez's attitude has "irked" some of Boston's veterans. Living in total harmony, the Red Sox are not.

Between that and the poor play, well, the comparisons to the 2012 Red Sox invite themselves. Hence the sudden rush of articles from people like Passan, Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports and Matthew Kory of FanGraphs pondering the big blow-up question.

A big question, indeed. And really, not an easy one to answer.

Jon Barash/Associated Press/Associated Press

To reiterate, there is still plenty of baseball to play this season. Things are dire, but Boston has time to turn things around.

And good news! The projections expect them to do just that!

…Just not as much as they need to.

According to FanGraphs, the Red Sox entered Wednesday projected to go 48-42 the rest of the way. That would only get them to 79-83 at season's end.

Baseball Prospectus offers a similar perspective, projecting the Red Sox to finish 49-41. That would put them at 80-82 at season's end.

Since neither of those records would put the Red Sox in October, they'll have to drastically outplay their projections. And for that to happen, it's not hard to pinpoint the players who need to get it together.

Sandoval and Ramirez, who were combining for minus-0.5 WAR heading into Wednesday, need to start giving Boston what it thought it was buying for roughly $200 million. For Ramirez, that means not being a historically bad left fielder. For Sandoval, that means doing better than a .745 OPS and subpar defense at the hot corner.

Jim Rogash/Getty Images

Beyond those two, the Red Sox also need David Ortiz (.729 OPS) and Mike Napoli (.675 OPS) to live up to their track records. They also need Miley, Rick Porcello and Joe Kelly, who all have ERAs of at least 4.50, to be more consistent. 

Those are the big items on the checklist. And indeed, that's asking for a lot to go right.

Probably too much, in fact. Because...

• The eye test says Ramirez's defense really has been that bad, and Ortiz is blocking him at DH.
• Sandoval's hitting has been declining for several years now, and his bad defense doesn't look like an accident when you consider what, even for him, looks like an especially rotund physique.
• Ortiz showed signs of decline last year at age 38, so further decline at age 39 makes sense.
• Napoli is 33, and Baseball Savant can highlight how his bat speed is declining, which means he struggles against good heat.
• Porcello, Miley and Kelly are pitch-to-contact guys who need good defense to succeed. No thanks to bullet points 1 and 2, Baseball Prospectus can vouch the Red Sox don't have that.

Considering all of this, there's a real chance the guys who need to step up aren't going to. And given that, even going out and upgrading with a Cole Hamels or a Johnny Cueto would only help so much. The Red Sox are not a quick fix or two away from being the explosive unit they need to be to catch up.

Then there's the long-haul aspect of all this. The Red Sox aren't committed to Napoli beyond 2015, but Ortiz has easily attainable vesting options for 2016 and 2017, and all the others mentioned above are locked up through 2018.

This mess isn't going away on its own anytime soon. Thus, the blow-up proposition.

Colin E. Braley/Associated Press

To this end, one good thing about these Red Sox is that they don't need a complete roster scrub. In Dustin Pedroia, Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts, Brock Holt, Eduardo Rodriguez and Clay Buchholz, Boston is built around a solid foundation of players who are either young or in their prime.

But which parts around that core can and should go? Naturally, that's tricky.

Regarding can go, you can scratch Ortiz. He won't agree to a trade and doesn't seem interested in retiring. 

Regarding should go, Porcello, Miley and Kelly stand out. But since two of them (Porcello and Miley) are expensive and all three don't have much trade value at the moment, moving them isn't entirely practical. And if each is only a good defense away from being effective, the Red Sox may benefit more from fixing that problem than treating Porcello, Miley and Kelly as the problem.

This leads us, finally, to the two guys who are in everyone's cross hairs: Sandoval and Ramirez. And not without good reason. They look like busts now, and neither offers a particularly hopeful future. 

Jim Rogash/Getty Images

The 28-year-old Sandoval's offense is already declining, and he may very well be starting his decline as a fielder. At 31, Ramirez's own offensive decline may not be far off. Even if it's not, his offense will only be useful for the Red Sox if they eliminate his defense. That requires the DH, which won't be available until Ortiz decides he doesn't want it anymore.

Of course, moving either—or both—of these two won't be easy. In Kory's words, "It’s not hard to see that since the Red Sox signed these players, their value has dropped, possibly substantially."

That means trading them would likely involve eating a lot of money and getting very little in return, a la the Los Angeles Angels' jettisoning of Josh Hamilton.

On the bright side, at least they'd be gone. On the not-so-bright side, their absences would create holes Boston doesn't really have the pieces to fill in the short term. Holt can't play left field and third base. Rusney Castillo doesn't look fit to play any outfield spot in the majors. Top prospects like infielders Yoan Moncada and Rafael Devers and outfielder Manuel Margot aren't close to MLB readiness.

The Red Sox would thus have to seek replacements from outside the organization. Assuming they'll eat a lot of money to move Sandoval and/or Ramirez, they'll have limited funds to do so. And given how obvious their needs at third base and/or in the outfield would be, a lack of leverage could result in them looking at outrageous asking prices on the trade market.

In all, it's like this: The only practical Red Sox roster blow-up essentially involves paying Sandoval and/or Ramirez to go away, and that solution would create an entirely new set of problems.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will now say this: This is the opposite of the conclusion I was expecting to reach.

The Red Sox rage-quitting their 2015 season by blowing up their roster sounds like a sexy idea on paper, and one very much worth considering given how well their roster blow-up in 2012 ended up working out. And certainly, ridding the team of Sandoval and Ramirez would be ridding the team of two players who legitimately look like bad fits.

But rather than jerk their knee and do something like that, the best thing Boston can do with the rest of its season is bite the bullet and play it out. 

The Red Sox can then reassess the situation over the winter. At that point, it might be easier to generate interest in Sandoval and Ramirez, perhaps in the form of bad-contract swaps. If they're still around on Opening Day 2016, Boston can hope for the best while knowing that their contracts will only get cheaper—and thus easier to eat—while Moncada, Devers and Margot get closer to being realistic replacements.

In short, the Red Sox might actually want to give patience a try this time around.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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