The Boston Red Sox

Wednesday, August 7, 2019

* The Boston Globe

Demise of the Royals a lesson in history for Red Sox

Alex Speier

Royals manager Ned Yost has seen a lot in baseball, enough that he simultaneously can express surprise

and familiarity with the predicament of the Red Sox’ sudden descent into a vortex.

Entering 2016, Yost and the Royals sat atop the baseball world. Over several years, the Royals had

progressed from a perennial doormat to a contender to a surprise pennant winner in 2014 to finally a

champion in 2015.

And so, in 2016, Kansas City was elated about mounting a title defense. The team gave no real thought to

breaking up an elite core of position players, and indeed, stretched its budget to re-sign free-agent

outfielder Alex Gordon to a four-year, $72 million deal.

Emboldened with the thought of repeating as champions, the Royals instead sputtered. After a slightly-

better-than-sideways 29-22 start, the Royals went 13-16 in June and 7-19 in July. Yet with several players

— including outfielder Lorenzo Cain, first baseman Eric Hosmer, third baseman Mike Moustakas, and

closer Wade Davis — a year and a half from free agency, Kansas City elected to stand pat at that year’s

trade deadline.

Even though the Royals were 8½ games out of wild-card contention on July 31, 2016, it was hard for them to ignore the allure of giving their core a chance to win again. Yet even though they played better down the

stretch, the Royals’ season ended at 81-81, any echo of the previous year’s glory having been rendered all

but inaudible.

“I don’t know if it was hard [to make the decision to keep the core together]. We still felt like we could get

hot and win,” Yost said. “In ’14, at the end of the year we came out of nowhere and made a run all the way

to the World Series. We thought we had the opportunity to do that, so we didn’t want to trade away any

chance of that happening. But, it just didn’t happen.”

In the offseason, the Royals took a half-measure to reconfigure their core, dealing Davis to the Cubs for

outfielder Jorge Soler, but still kept the rest of the group for a last hurrah.

At the 2017 trade deadline, the front office again elected to stand pat — understandable given that the

Royals owned the second wild-card spot on July 31. But they again missed the playoffs, finishing 80-82 in

a season more memorable for sentimentality than on-field accomplishments.

What Kansas City did was, and is, understandable. The team’s remarkable 2014-15 run was built in no

small part on the trust placed by the front office over the long haul.

Yet the consequences of the keep-the-band-together strategy — both during the slide to mediocrity in 2016-

17, and a descent into 100-loss territory both in 2018 and now 2019 — offer something of a warning for a

Red Sox team that faces growing questions about its future identity.

Obviously, Boston is in a different financial universe than Kansas City — the Red Sox have already

reached long-term deals with a trio of key World Series contributors, Nate Eovaldi (four years, $68

million), Chris Sale (five years, $145 million extension), and Xander Bogaerts (six years, $120 million).

Whereas the Royals rode out their years of control of their core with a full rebuild as a consequence, the

Red Sox aren’t likely to endure such a long process given both their financial resources and the fact that not

all of their core position players will hit free agency at once.

Still, the poor return on Eovaldi’s first season and Sale’s concerning 2019 performance — one year before

his extension takes effect — underscores the point that the Royals demonstrated: Faith in a group’s collective accomplishments, and fear of altering what once proved a successful formula, is a dangerous

roster-building principle. The magic of one year does not easily get replicated the next.

“We all found out — and I think Boston is finding out — how tough it is to defend. I don’t know why,”

Yost said. “I thought for sure Boston would have a team capable of doing it. I thought Houston would have

a team capable of doing it, I thought the Cubs had a team capable of doing it, and I thought we had a team

capable of doing it. It’s really tough to do.”

Eventually, players on a championship club become too expensive to keep together. When that happens, a

team faces a crossroad in which it must decide whether to see a breakup by design (via trades) or by default

(free agency). The Red Sox are nearing such a point, potentially as soon as this winter. Whenever it comes,

much like the Royals, there will be questions about whether the Red Sox waited too long to begin the inevitable.

Even though the Royals failed to repeat, however, Yost does not second-guess what his team did — or,

more accurately, did not do — after 2015. When a team wins a title, it’s hard to change course and make

the aggressive decision to move on from players who were the heartbeat of a championship run.

“I don’t live in retrospect. I don’t have regrets. We made a decision and we live by our decisions,” Yost

said. “It was a group that came up together, did something special together, and we wanted to give them

one more opportunity to do it together again and it just didn’t work out.”

It remains to be seen whether the Red Sox look back on this group with similar sentiments. There is time for the 2019 Red Sox to alter their outlook. But as Kansas City can attest, the notion of a title defense can

evolve quickly from an opportunity to a trap.

Celtics rookies Grant Williams, Carsen Edwards throw out the first pitch at Red Sox game

Nicole Yang

Celtics rookie Grant Williams had quite the stage for his first-ever attempt at pitching a baseball.

“I’m actually very nervous for it,” Williams said shortly before the moment Tuesday night. “Walking up to

the mound, I’m going to be nervous. My hands are going to start sweating.”

Prior to Red Sox starter Andrew Cashner’s 93.7-mile-per-hour fastball to open the first inning against the

Kansas City Royals, Williams and teammate Carsen Edwards took the mound at Fenway Park to deliver the

ceremonial first pitches.

The two, donning customized Sox jerseys with their last names printed across the top, were greeted with

hearty cheers and applause from fans — several of whom had requested photos and autographs earlier in

the day.

Neither one hit the strike zone, with Williams sinking his low near the dirt and Edwards sailing his high

and away. Williams equated his throw to an “eephus pitch,” an old term used to describe a low-speed circus

pitch.

“Mine stopped a little bit short,” he said, with a smile.

The evening’s festivities started well before game’s scheduled start time of 7:10 p.m., as the two spent a

couple of hours visiting iconic spots in the ballpark. Edwards was joined by his brother and girlfriend,

while Williams was joined by his father, uncle, and agent.

Up first was a trip to the Samuel Adams Deck for a meet and greet with fans and the Larry O’Brien trophy. The session was followed by batting practice, where Williams rattled off a few facts about Fenway and

surmised he could definitely hit a home run due to the park’s dimensions.

As the Royals went through their usual routines, Williams also took a few minutes to FaceTime teammate

Tacko Fall, who is in his home country of Senegal. Once Fall was on the line, he held his phone up to a

group of fans who immediately began chanting, “Tac-ko! Tac-ko!” from behind the netting.

Williams and Edwards also briefly chatted with Red Sox right fielder Mookie Betts, who has been spotted

watching Celtics games at TD Garden on multiple occasions.

Later, the pair made their way over to the Green Monster, where they went inside to sign their names on the

wall and posed for photographs in front of the scoreboard. Edwards jokingly motioned as if he had just made a catch on the warning track, and Williams played catch with his uncle.

The trip to Fenway Park marked Williams’s second since getting drafted by the Celtics in June. Earlier this

summer, he sat on the Green Monster to watch Liverpool take on Sevilla in a soccer friendly.

The 20-year-old said he has been enjoying his time exploring the city and hopes to do so even more now

that he has officially moved in.

“Now it’s more so about understanding where things are in the city, how to get around,” Williams said.

“I’ve made a lot of U-Turns and a lot of rights that I should have made lefts.”

With four Celtics — Jaylen Brown, Marcus Smart, Jayson Tatum, and Kemba Walker — participating in

Team USA training camp in Las Vegas this week, Williams and Edwards are helping hold down the local

contingent at the Auerbach Center.

“We’re goofy,” Williams said. “Me and Semi today were just goofing around. Carsen’s probably the

biggest goofer of them all. It’s going to be a great year chemistry-wise and great on the court because we

have a lot of talented players.”

Steven Wright may be done for season; Heath Hembree expected to return

Matt Porter

Two Red Sox relievers are on the shelf with arm trouble, and the trade deadline inaction surrounding the

bullpen continues to seem regrettable in retrospect.

Heath Hembree was to receive a platelet-rich plasma injection in his pitching elbow Tuesday, manager

Alex Cora announced at the end of his pregame chat with reporters. Additionally, injured knuckleballer

Steven Wright was on his way to Florida to see Dr. James Andrews, signaling that he may not be back any

time soon.

Hembree, who was placed on the injured list Friday with lateral inflammation in his right elbow, Cora said,

is expected to return this season. His issue seems to be on the outside of the elbow. “It’s not his ligament,”

said Cora, who needed not remind anyone he is not a medical doctor. “It’s not the reddest of the red flags.”

Hembree spent three weeks on the IL, beginning June 14, with a right elbow extensor strain. He pitched 12

times before returning to the IL.

In the first 2½ months of the season, Hembree was one of the Red Sox’ most effective relievers, posting a

2.51 ERA with 35 strikeouts in 28⅔ innings. He held batters to a .189 average with a .645 OPS.

Between his recent stints on the IL, Hembree allowed 10 runs (nine earned), six walks, and three homers in

nine innings. Opponents were batting .350 with a 1.208 OPS.

Wright, hampered by left knee trouble the last two years, has felt good in that area of late, Cora said.

Because of his arm, however, his status for the rest of the year is unclear.

“He played catch the other day and didn’t feel too comfortable with it,” Cora said. “We’ll see what they say

about Steven tomorrow.”

Wright, limited to 53⅔ innings last season because of a left knee injury, had surgery in November and was

suspended the first 80 games of 2019 for testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs. He made six

appearances before he was struck in the toe by a line drive on July 13, sending him to the IL.

The 34-year-old had an 8.53 ERA in 6⅓ this year.

Bogaerts gets rest

Xander Bogaerts played 111 of the Red Sox’ first 116 games. Even a spry 26-year-old All-Star, ostensibly

at the peak of his powers, needs a rest.

Bogaerts was given a day off on Tuesday.

“He needs one of those. He’s been playing a lot,” Cora said before the game, noting that after the seventh

inning of Monday’s 7-5 win over the Royals Bogaerts was “dragging.”

After Bogaerts scored from first on Andrew Benintendi’s two-run double to right, he used all of his exit

ramp to slow down, pressing against the short fence behind home plate to stop his momentum. He looked a

bit weary-legged.

After Monday’s day off to rest a tight back, J.D. Martinez was back in his DH spot Tuesday, though Cora

said Martinez was ready to play the outfield if needed. His back was feeling that good.

Mookie Betts, his left shin bruised when hit by a foul ball on Monday, batted leadoff Tuesday and played

right field.

Last year, the Red Sox’ success in the standings let Cora sprinkle in rest days for his stars and others. Their

current position — 5½ games behind the Rays for the second wild card as of Tuesday morning — doesn’t allow him similar flexibility.

The club has had one day off since returning from the All-Star break on July 12. The Sox are in a stretch of

playing 16 days in a row, and 33 of 34. Their next day off is Aug. 15.

“It’s not easy,” Cora said. “You’ve got to create a balance. With injuries and moves, it’s hard to give guys a

rest. You’ve got to be realistic, too. They need [rest] for us to pull it off. We need them to be fresh.”

A brief respite is on the horizon. After Wednesday’s series finale against the Royals, the Red Sox will play

four against the Angels and three in Cleveland before a day off Aug. 15. They will be off the final three

Thursdays of August, and the final two Mondays of the month. They also will be off the first Monday of September.

“We’re very conscious of it,” Cora said of his star players’ energy levels. “We think the schedule is going

to help us out.”

Run of success

The Red Sox’ recent skid put them in rare company. Before losing eight in a row, ending with Monday’s

win, the Sox had not lost five or more in a row since losing eight straight in July 2015. That was the fifth-

longest stretch without a losing streak of five-plus games in baseball history, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. The 1930-38 Yankees hold the longest streak without a five-game skid (1,233 games), followed by

the 1946-52 Yankees (878), 2001-06 Braves (712), 1882-88 St. Louis Browns (666), and 2015-19 Red Sox

(662) . . . Rafael Devers, who hit his 23rd home run of the season Monday, became the first Sox player

younger than 23 to reach that total in a season since Tony Conigliaro (28 homers) and George Scott (27)

did so in 1966 . . . With Rick Porcello pitching six innings on Monday, the Red Sox improved to 17-5 in

their last 22 games (beginning June 12) when their starter goes at least six.

Another rough night for Cashner leads to another loss for Red Sox

Matt Porter

When the Red Sox traded for Andrew Cashner, they were hoping the burly righthander would replicate the success he had in Baltimore over the first 3½ months of the season.

Cashner, who went 4-15 with a 5.29 ERA last year, opened this season 9-3 with a 3.83 ERA in 17 starts

with the Orioles. If he wasn’t that guy, the Red Sox were betting that he wouldn’t slip back to 2018 level.

He is slipping and sliding, and the Sox need him to stop.

Dave Dombrowski’s lone July acquisition gave up a season-high three homers over 5⅓ innings in Tuesday

night’s 6-2 loss to the Royals, each one of them hammered out of the yard. Cashner coughed up seven hits,

six earned runs, two walks, and a wild pitch. He struck out four, touching 96.4 miles per hour with his

fastball, but the Royals were locked in.

The Red Sox (60-56), losers of nine of their last 10, watched Jorge Soler (twice) and Ryan O’Hearn leave

the yard. Offensively, the home team couldn’t get out of its own way.

Pitching didn’t deserve all the blame Tuesday. Andrew Benintendi’s RBI single in the third and Christian

Vazquez’s RBI double in the eighth were the Sox’ only breakthroughs offensively.

After going 2 for 10 with runners in scoring position, they are 8 for 48 in their last seven games (.167).

They didn’t produce enough, but another common theme — a Red Sox starter floundering — continued on

an otherwise gorgeous night for baseball.

Including Cashner’s latest dud, Boston starters have allowed six or more runs six times in their last 10

games. Their ERA in that span is 9.50.

The new guy looked stout at the outset, facing the minimum through three innings. He lost it in the fourth.

Cashner (1-4, 7.53 ERA as a Red Sox starter) had retired six in a row when he issued a two-out walk in the

fourth. The next batter, Soler, took the first pitch and put it over everything in left. It left the bat at 110.8

m.p.h., the fifth-hardest hit ball off Cashner this year.

In the fifth, O’Hearn pulled a missile to right. The readout: 111.1 m.p.h. That was fourth-hardest ball in

play off Cashner, who has allowed multiple homers three times in five starts for the Red Sox. He did so

once in 17 starts with the Orioles.

The Royals (41-74), who entered the night 31 games back in the AL Central, made it 6-1 in the sixth, on a

Hunter Dozier RBI single, and Soler’s second homer of the night, a rainbow blast off a left-field banner,

some 20 feet over the heads of last-row Green Monster spectators. A worm-burner single by the next batter,

Cheslor Cuthbert, had Red Sox manager Alex Cora hopping out of the dugout.

It was a solid night for the Red Sox’ defense, and those who like instant replay. Kansas City’s Whit

Merrifield mashed a fastball off the Monster and appeared to scoot into second with a double, just ahead of

Jackie Bradley Jr.’s throw. But he lost his balance as Michael Chavis was applying the tag, and his foot

came a hair off the bag. After a Red Sox challenge and review of 1 minute, 53 seconds, the safe call was overturned.

Second baseman Chavis got the second out of the eighth by sprinting to center and making a diving catch

with a barrel-roll finish.

Offensively, it wasn’t there for Boston.

Christian Vazquez and Mitch Moreland had hard-hit, one-out singles in the second. After advancing to

third on a fly out, Vazquez — no threat to run — was dancing halfway to home as Jakob Junis tried to

escape the jam. Bradley flew to the gap, center fielder Bubba Starling and right fielder Dozier colliding as

Starling caught the third out.

J.D. Martinez, returning to the lineup after a day off to rest his sore back, was oddly trying to steal when

Benintendi struck out to end the first. He walked off the field in some discomfort, reaching toward his

hip/lower back. He appeared fine during his next at-bat, when he laced a wall-ball double.

In the third, Rafael Devers drilled a double down the left-field line and scored when Benintendi dropped a

single into right. Benintendi advanced on Brock Holt’s single but was stranded on third.

After Martinez led off the eighth with a ground-rule double to right off Richard Lovelady, Vazquez drove

him in with a gap double to left-center.

To set up their last chance at a rally, reliever Darwinzon Hernandez struck out the side in the ninth. He has a 0.00 ERA with 18 strikeouts in nine innings since his call-up last month.

To end their hopes, the Sox went 1-2-3.

. . .

HARDEST-HIT BALLS OFF CASHNER IN 2019

Per Baseball Savant

120.6 m.p.h. — Giancarlo Stanton, Yankees, single, March 28

113.1 m.p.h.— Aaron Judge, Yankees, ground out, July 26

112.6 m.p.h.— Luke Voit, Yankees, home run, March 28

111.1 m.p.h.— Ryan O’Hearn, Orioles, home run, Aug. 6

110.8 m.p.h. — Jorge Soler, Orioles, home run, Aug. 6

Dave Dombrowski may have to take the fall for Red Sox’ falloff

Dan Shaughnessy

Picked-up pieces while planning a rare October vacation . . .

I’ll be shocked if Dave Dombrowski is back with the Red Sox next season. Boston’s president of baseball

operations has increasingly isolated himself with pals Frank Wren and Tony La Russa and has few friends

inside Fenway’s walls. Dombrowski is under contract for just one more season.

When you have the top payroll in baseball and don’t make the playoffs, somebody has to go. Alex Cora

isn’t going anywhere. Dombrowski has been exactly what we thought he would be. He delivered a

championship. But he gets the blame for the Chris Sale and Nathan Eovaldi contracts and for failing to

address the bullpen need. He’s clearly not the guy to oversee a much-needed farm system rebuild.

Candidate to replace Dombrowski: Eddie Romero.

Hope we’ve heard the last of the annual fake news story on our sports calendar: Tom Brady’s contract. The

man is 42. He’s infinitely wealthy. He is the fifth Kraft son. He is never going to play for another team. He

is never going to hold out. He is your quarterback until he and the Krafts agree that it’s over. And his level

of compensation will never be commensurate with his contributions to the franchise — not until he

eventually gets a piece of the team or whatever post-retirement deal he strikes with ownership.

Fans who don’t think Bill Parcells should be in the Patriots Hall of Fame are irrational, immature, or just

too young to know anything.

The Krafts want you to think they are the ones who turned the franchise around. No. Everything changed when Parcells was hired by then-owner James Orthwein. Parcells delivered instant credibility and got a 2-

14 team into a Super Bowl in four seasons. He brought Bill Belichick to New England. He drafted Lawyer

Milloy, Tedy Bruschi, Ty Law, Curtis Martin, and Willie McGinest.

Parcells left on bad terms after Kraft betrayed him, instructing Bobby Grier to make a first-round draft pick

behind Parcells’s back.

Ask yourselves this, Parcells haters: How would Belichick have handled things if Kraft ordered Nick

Caserio to overrule Belichick on draft day — without informing Belichick of what was going to happen?

Many fans overuse the “how many rings did he win?” argument. It does not apply in every situation. Sam Jones was great. He won 10 championship rings as a player, second most in NBA history. But that does not

make him the second-best player in NBA history.

The “ring argument’’ would hold that Jonny Gomes did more for Boston than Ted Williams. Sorry, but

“how many rings did he win?’’ rarely tells the whole story.

Tony Renda has a ring. He made one appearance with the 2018 Red Sox, pinch-running for Sandy Leon.

He scored a winning run in Boston’s four-game sweep of the Yankees last August. He is Boston’s

Moonlight Graham. And he has more rings than Carl Yastrzemski.

One of the more underrated stats that explains the Patriot dynasty is turnover differential. The Patriots are

plus-189 since Brady became Belichick’s quarterback in 2001. The Patriots take care of the football.

Circle Sept. 17 on your calendar. That’s when Mike Yastrzemski and the San Francisco Giants come to

Fenway for a three-game series.

Yaz’s grandson has been playing right field for the Giants, but here’s hoping manager Bruce Bochy puts

him in left for the first inning of the first game.

Sept. 17 also marks the return of Pablo Sandoval, who is making all his money from the Red Sox while

doing good things again for the Giants. Sox officials inform me there will not be a Panda video tribute (belt

buckle exploding in mid-swing?) to celebrate his return.

When Jim Bouton died, Jim Palmer tweeted, “Boyhood idol cause he was a Yankee. Hit a homer off him in

1965 in 1st ML win. Reading his classic ‘Ball Four’ on the spring training team bus to Pompano Beach,

Frank Robinson saw me, wouldn’t talk to me for a month.”

Fans of the Kansas City Chiefs embarrassed themselves when the nefarious Tyreek Hill reported for duty

on the practice field at Missouri Western State University. Nitwit Chiefs fans chanted “Ty-reek, Ty-reek!’’

when Hill appeared.

Hill, who has been embroiled in a child abuse controversy, bragged, “Cheetah’s back!’’

This is the same guy who pled guilty to punching and choking his girlfriend while in college in 2014 and

most recently admitted that he punches his 3-year-old son to toughen him up.

I feel badly for Dana LeVangie, the hardest-working man in baseball, who is almost certain to lose his job

as Red Sox pitching coach. LeVangie, the pride of Whitman-Hanson, deserves to be reassigned by the Sox.

He has been with the Sox organization since 1991.

Bobby Valentine and Marty Barrett spoke at Bill Buckner’s memorial service in Boise June 22.

Quiz: Who was the last baseball MVP winner who was over 30 on Opening Day? (Answer below.)

This will be the 12th consecutive major league season in which we will have a record for strikeouts. More

than a third of all plate appearances now result in a home run, a walk, or a strikeout. Zzzzzzzzzz.

New pet peeve: seeing Red Sox pitchers step off the rubber, take off their hat, and look inside for

information. That’s where the nuclear codes are hidden. It’s part of the Sox paranoia about having signs

stolen.

A couple of days before the death of Nick Buoniconti, Keith Lincoln died at the age of 80 in Pullman,

Wash. Lincoln, a running back/receiver with the San Diego Chargers, accounted for a whopping 329 yards

of offense when the Chargers slaughtered the Boston Patriots, 51-10, in the 1963 AFL Championship

game. Lincoln rushed for 206 yards and caught seven passes for 123 yards against Mike Holovak’s Patriots at Balboa Stadium in San Diego.

Alex Rodriguez told the New York Post that the five best hitters from his day were Barry Bonds, Ken

Griffey Jr., Manny Ramirez, Edgar Martinez, and Albert Pujols. Five best pitchers: Randy Johnson, Roger

Clemens, Curt Schilling, Pedro Martinez, and Mariano Rivera.

Lookalikes: Patriots Hall of Famer John Hannah and Attorney General William Barr.

Wonder when NESN will feature Eck and David Price in the “Heat Zone”?

Raise your hand if you knew that former Red Sox pitcher John Burkett is competing on the Pro Bowlers

Senior Tour.

Fanboy federal judge Richard Berman, who was overruled in the Deflategate saga, is presiding over the

Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case.

Clemens will pitch at the annual Oldtime Baseball Game at St. Peter’s Field in Cambridge Aug. 22.

Jay-Z is the Pumpsie Green of the Fenway Park concert series. Since the Sox started using the ballpark as a

concert venue in 2003, they have booked more than 55 acts, only one of which included an African-

American headliner: Jay-Z with Justin Timberlake in 2013.

Folks in Dalton have created a Sports Hall of Fame, with the first induction ceremony scheduled for Sept. 15. Among the inductees: Former big league pitchers Jeff Reardon and Turk Wendell, and MLB executives

Dan and Jim Duquette.

She’s never been ranked higher than 32, but I always check the tennis scores to see how Ukraine’s Dayana

Yastremska is doing.

Doesn’t it feel like the Mets and Knicks have become the same team?

Nothing’s official, but it looks like the Nets are coming to TD Garden Nov. 27. That should be your first

chance to boo Kyrie Irving.

Haven’t heard much about women’s soccer since glory hog Megan Rapinoe came off the float after the

ticker-tape parade in New York City, grabbed the live microphone, and exclaimed, “New York City, you’re

the [expletive] best!”

The Red Sox were the one and only franchise to host a literary series. The “Great Fenway Park Writers

Series” was run by San Diego native and former Robert Kennedy political operative George Mitrovich,

who died last month at age 83. Mitrovich brought a legendary cast of authors to Fenway in this century.

Speaking of authors, be sure to order or pick up “Homegrown: How The Red Sox Built A Champion From

the Ground Up” by the Globe’s Alex Speier, which is in stores next Tuesday.

Quiz answer: Alex Rodriguez, 2007.

* The Boston Herald

Andrew Cashner’s struggles continue as Red Sox lose to Royals

Jason Mastrodonato

Was this the night the Red Sox gave up?

How else does one explain their inactivity — the word that perhaps best explains the entire season — in the sixth inning on Tuesday night?

Why else would a fully focused and properly inspired baseball team have nobody warm in the bullpen with

the struggling Andrew Cashner going through the order a third time, about to face one of the game’s

premier power hitters, one who had already hit a towering homer two innings earlier?

Nobody was warm. A mound visit was all that transpired. And Cashner quickly allowed a second

mammoth shot to Jorge Soler, a dagger that sank the Red Sox, who took a 6-2 loss to the Kansas City

Royals.

“I know he hit a home run in the previous at-bat,” manager Alex Cora said, “but it was a matchup we like.”

The loss dropped the Sox to 6 1/2 games back of the second wild card spot.

Just last Wednesday, Dave Dombrowski said the Sox didn’t need another pitcher at the trade deadline

because they had faith in their bullpen and had already acquired Cashner.

Six days later, Cashner was knocked around the park by MLB’s 26th-ranked offense. The Royals plated six

runs off him. They went deep three times.

He might’ve been saved two of those runs had Cora and his coaching staff decided on a quicker hook when

Soler was due up in the sixth.

Over his career, Cashner has had major trouble getting through the order three times. Opponents’ OPS the

third time through skyrockets from .696 to .736 to .799. The same trend exists this year. Asked why he

thinks he’s struggled in those spots, Cashner said, “I don’t know. I’m not a numbers guy.”

In the fourth inning, with the Red Sox up 1-0, he tried going high and tight with a fastball against Soler,

who turned on it so quickly the ball shot toward the moon and hung there for a while, finally falling

somewhere behind the Green Monster on Lansdowne Street.

Kansas City scored another off a long ball in the fifth to take a 3-1 lead.

The sixth inning was the Royals’ first shot at Cashner a third time through the order. Leadoff hitter Whit

Merrifield collected his second hit to start the inning with a single. Alex Gordon grounded out, then Hunter

Dozier hit a laser off Michael Chavis’ glove for another single.

Merrifield scored. And Soler was on deck, about to connect on his 31st home run of the season.

Instead of making a pitching change, Cora sent Dana LeVangie to the mound for a brief discussion. Two

pitches later, Cashner hung a slider and Soler flattened it. Again it sailed over the Monster. Two more runs

were in.

“Just trying to throw a slider away and I hung it,” Cashner said.

Said catcher Christian Vazquez, “Maybe he was looking for the slider. Was trying to expand away and it

was in the middle of the plate. He’s a strong guy so he hit it out.”

It was that simple.

And instead of the Red Sox being just three runs behind with four more innings to hit, they were looking at

a 6-1 deficit and the air sucked out of Fenway Park.

It was the last pitch of the night for Cashner, as Cora went out to get him after the Sox had already secured

their fate.

Why was nobody except left-hander Josh Taylor warming before the sixth inning?

“We were thinking Taylor for the lefty two batters later, but I guess it didnt work out,” Cora said.

In Cashner’s five starts since the Red Sox acquired him from the Orioles, he’s 1-4 with a 7.54 ERA. He

was 9-3 with a 3.83 ERA in Baltimore this year.

“I just think I just made too many mistakes and they’ve hammered them here when I’ve made them,” he

said. “But I’ve pitched up here for a long time. So I mean this has probably been one of the toughest

stretches of my career.”

Cora, too, is out of answers.

“We’re keeping things simple,” he said. “It’s kind of the same game plan. It’s just, he’s not executing his

pitches and they’re hitting the ball out of the ballpark.”

The manager can’t save his team from their poor play. There’s not a lot he can do about a starting rotation

that has a 9.50 ERA in the last 10 games, leading to a 1-9 record that might’ve ended the Sox’ postseason

hopes.

But the Sox looked lifeless on Tuesday night, the manager included.

Eduardo Rodriguez the lone bright spot in Red Sox rotation in 2019

Jason Mastrodonato

On a Red Sox starting rotation that costs almost $90 million, the most effective and consistent of the five is

also the least expensive.

Eduardo Rodriguez, who starts vs. the Royals on Wednesday, is having the breakout season the Red Sox

have been waiting for.

Even if it doesn’t look the way they dreamed it up.

“Coming into last season, I knew he was very talented,” manager Alex Cora said. “We knew the stuff. I

think it’s more about him trusting the stuff, trusting that these are your best pitches, just throw them. He

gets creative here and there, but I think overall, he’s understanding who he is.”

It was back in 2015 when he was hired to replace Ben Cherington that Dave Dombrowski said of

Rodriguez, “He’s got a chance to be a No. 1-type of pitcher.”

Over four years, the left-hander only teased the Sox with moments of brilliance thanks to a high-90s heater

and one of the game’s best changeups.

“In the beginning, he wasn’t able to get lefties out,” Cora said. “That was huge. That was a big problem for

him and for us. But little by little, that’s the difference between him early in the season and now. He has a

lot of confidence. Coming into the season, he was healthy for the first time. he was in great shape — the

best shape of his life.”

This year, he’s put it together, though not in a way that’s allowed him to dominate and be the ace

Dombrowski once envisioned. The stats aren’t all beautiful: 135-⅓ innings, 4.19 ERA, 1.32 WHIP, 139

strikeouts and 50 walks.

Instead, he’s become a quality innings eater.

“For me it’s something I’ve been trying to do a long time ago,” said Rodriguez, making $4.3 million this

year, his first of three in salary arbitration before he’s eligible to be a free agent. “Just go out there and give

innings. That’s all I want. To be healthy and go out there and throw as many innings as I can.”

He’s taken the mound for the start of the seventh inning 10 times in 23 starts.

Last year? He did that just twice in 23 starts.

“We joke with him, actually, you know the saying, ‘five and die?’” Cora said. “There’s no more of that.

He’s actually looking to go more. The other day, he wanted to face one more hitter. I decided no, and I

explained why, but I like the fact that he’s not shying away from it. he wants to be that guy.

“I think it started going into Minnesota in June. We needed him to go deep into the game because we were

very limited in the bullpen and against a good lineup and he wasn’t great that night but he knew that we

needed innings and he did, and he ended up winning that game. He’s been great this season and he’s still

learning, that’s the cool thing about it.”

Heath Hembree gets PRP injection, Steven Wright to visit Dr. Andrews

Jason Mastrodonato

The Red Sox need a miracle to sneak into the playoffs, but they haven’t given up yet.

Heath Hembree will undergo a platelet-rich plasma injection Tuesday in an apparent attempt to shortcut an

elbow injury and return to pitch for the Sox before this season ends.

The hard-throwing reliever had a 2.51 ERA on June 10, his last outing before he hit the injured list for the

first time this year. He has a 9.00 ERA ever since. He’s back on the injured list again with right lateral

elbow inflammation.

The PRP injection “is not on the inside part of the elbow, it’s on the outside part of the elbow,” manager Alex Cora said.

That is significant because “it’s not his ligament,” Cora said. “It’s not like, the reddest of red flags, I

guess.”

Hembree’s velocity has been down 2 to 3 mph since he first hit the injured list in June and clearly hasn’t

been right.

Pitchers who receive PRP injections often need surgery down the road, but circumvent that option with a

quicker plan to return to the field.

“We’ll see but we expect him to pitch this season,” Cora said.

Wright makes visit

Knuckleballer Steven Wright would appear less likely to return this year after it was announced Tuesday he

will visit Dr. James Andrews, famed orthopedic surgeon well known for performing Tommy John

surgeries.

Wright has been trying to come back from the same knee surgery that may have ended Dustin Pedroia’s

career, but since has run into arm problems as well.

“Throughout the season, his knee was good, but his arm kind of like, he felt like he could pitch but he wasn’t at his best,” Cora said. “He played catch the other day. He didn’t feel too comfortable so we’re

going to send him down there and see Dr. Andrews to see if there’s anything going on.”

Wright’s elbow has become problematic, Cora said.

He didn’t make his season debut until June 26 and made just six relief appearances with an 8.53 ERA

before he was placed back on the injured list in mid-July.

Rotation struggling

After Andrew Cashner allowed six runs in the Red Sox’ 6-2 loss to the Royals on Tuesday, the starting

rotation now has a 9.50 ERA in its last 10 games.

“It’s tough, but we’re human so we make mistakes,” said catcher Christian Vazquez. “That’s why this

game is so hard to play. We turn the page and get it tomorrow.”

Asked why the starters are getting hit hard with pitches at the top of the zone, Vazquez said plainly, “I

think everybody knows that we pitch up. They make adjustments. They have reports and they look for it.”

Rare day off

Giving their best player a day off in August when they’re fighting for relevance in the wild card race, the

Red Sox showed Tuesday they’re not changing an approach that worked in 2018.

Xander Bogaerts needed this one, Cora said.

The Sox shortstop has started in 111 of the team’s 115 games this season. Only Marcus Semien of the

Oakland Athletics has started more games at shortstop this season (114).

“He’s been playing a lot,” Cora said of Bogaerts, who was 0-for-15 in the four-game set vs. the Yankees

over the weekend. “Yesterday after they scored in the seventh or the eighth, you could see he was

dragging.”

Maintaining some built-in rest is key, Cora has believed.

“With injuries and moves and all that stuff, it’s hard to give guys a rest,” he said. “I think that you have to

be realistic too. They may need that for us to pull this off. We need them fresh. So we see the opportunity

and go from there.

“Saturday the plan was to give one of these guys the second game off but we took them out early enough

they were able to play two. And then we had the night game. But we’re very cautious about it. I think the

schedule is going to help us out toward the second part of the month but for now we have to be sure we’re

cautious and keep them fresh.”

Martinez returns

J.D. Martinez (back) returned to the lineup Tuesday after missing Monday’s game and went 2-for-4 with a

double. …

Mariners shortstop Tim Beckham, who tortured Chris Sale with two home runs off him on Opening Day in

Seattle, was handed an 80-game suspension after testing positive for Stanozolol. …

Brock Holt spent time with a Jimmy Fund patient and the patient’s family during batting practice, as he

does every Tuesday as part of the “Brock’s Stars” program. Holt also provides the family with tickets for

the game.

* The Providence Journal

Royals 6, Red Sox 2: Andrew Cashner roughed up as Boston loses again

Bill Koch, The Providence Journal

It’s not all Andrew Cashner’s fault.

The right-hander was booed to the home dugout Tuesday night at Fenway Park. It was the top of the sixth

inning and Cashner was on the wrong end of yet another difficult start. The lowly Royals were about to

snap an eight-game losing streak against the Red Sox, and the 36,360 patrons on hand expressed their displeasure.

Whether those witnesses to a meek 6-2 Boston loss are aware of it or not, it’s what Cashner represents

more than the pitcher himself that draws their ire. They don’t really know anything more about the 32-year-

old Texan than what’s displayed on his Baseball Reference page.

Fairly or unfairly, Cashner is a symbol for the club’s failure to strengthen in any significant fashion at the

July 31 deadline. The Red Sox stopped short of the additional moves made by the likes of American

League wild card contenders Tampa Bay, Oakland and Cleveland. The blame for that sits at the feet of an

organization member who’s never worn a uniform – president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski.

“We’re talking to people and there’s a lot of stuff going on,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said July 30. “Let’s see what happens. Like I said on Sunday, every team is looking to improve.”

“I look forward to seeing what happens tomorrow,” David Price said that same night. “I think everybody

else does, too.”

The following afternoon brought crickets. It was like being served sugar-free cake on your birthday or non-

alcoholic champagne on New Year’s Eve. Sure, Cashner was worth a streamer or two and maybe a bunch

of balloons, but he couldn’t possibly be the centerpiece.

Aside from his lone start against the Yankees on July 26, Boston fans have seen why. Cashner now sports a

7.53 earned-run average with the Red Sox and has allowed seven home runs in 28 2/3 innings. He gave up

none in his last five starts with Baltimore, covering 32 innings for the American League East’s resident

doormat.

“It’s been tough,” Cashner said. “I think over the course of my career I’ve been good at limiting damage,

and I haven’t done a good job of that since I’ve been here.”

Tuesday marked Cashner’s 280th appearance in the big leagues and his 187th start. Per FanGraphs, his

career Wins Above Replacement stands at 11.2 – an average of 1.2 wins better than an average pitcher

since his 2010 debut with the Cubs. Chris Sale’s fWAR in 2017 alone was 7.5 – it’s 44.2 for his career.

Jorge Soler’s pair of home runs and a solo shot by Ryan O’Hearn did the most severe damage against

Cashner. Boston couldn’t rally because of a wasteful 2-for-10 performance with runners in scoring

position, stranding eight men. The Red Sox are 15-for-80 with men at second or third over their last 10

games, and the fact they’ve lost nine of them isn’t a coincidence.

“I don’t know if it’s pressure,” Cora said. “I know that we expanded the zone today. There were some

pitches to the edges of the zone, and you can’t do damage there.”

Boston’s attack stalled early and was facing a five-run deficit by the sixth. Christian Vazquez flew to the

Bleacher Bar in center field to end the third, with Bubba Starling making a nice leaping catch at the wall to

leave a pair. Rafael Devers found Starling again in deep center to leave two more men in the fourth.

“It’s tough, but we’re human,” Vazquez said. “We make mistakes. That’s why this game is so hard to

play.”

Cora and his Boston players are professionals. There has been nothing to suggest anything less than full

effort given over this untimely sour stretch, one that has left them 6½ games behind the Rays for a playoff

berth. It would be something beyond unfair to blame Cashner for this sudden tailspin when he’s only

pitched in two games.

Yet here the Red Sox sit, one day closer to playing golf in October instead of defending their World Series

title. And there will be plenty of blame pie to divide if and when that day eventually comes.

Red Sox left their heart in 2018

Bill Reynolds, The Providence Journal

It’s August. Do you know where your Red Sox are?

Fourteen and a half games out in the American League East, and 5 1/2 out in the wildcard race entering

Tuesday’s game.

That’s where.

Or what a difference a year makes.

Then again, baseball’s a strange game, maybe the strangest of games, for when things go bad, there are

usually lots of moving parts.

And this is a strange season.

And it’s no longer just the record.

It’s the realization that the landscape has changed and it’s never coming back.

No longer are the Sox the star-crossed lovers, each season a fight against their tortured past, as if Original

Sin always was in the on-deck circle, warming up by swinging two big bats, just waiting to get its chance at

the plate. That’s been gone since 2004, the year the Red Sox won their first World Series since 1918, all

those old ghosts sent back to baseball’s ancient history shelf, the past sent to some old bullpen no one ever

went to anymore. Now they are just another huge-market franchise with huge money.

The “Curse of the Bambino?″

The beautiful losers?

The franchise that hadn’t won a World Series almost since the beginning of time?

All gone with the wind, like remnants from a different universe.

Now, the Red Sox enter each season with expectations as high as the Green Monster. Last year, they were

baseball’s best team. Most of the players returned, so the feeling was this team could repeat, or get pretty

close.

Third place?

Not good enough. Alex Cora’s golden touch seems to have faded away. Mookie Betts isn’t having an

MVP-like season. And the bullpen? Please.

And that’s the irony here.

For, wasn’t it better before?

Wasn’t it better when a Red Sox season was a cause, one that came wrapped in both history and passion?

Wasn’t it better when they were playing for something more than just another World Series banner and

more money in their paychecks? Wasn’t it better when they were playing for redemption, history and all

the other things that rarely show up on the scoreboard? Wasn’t it better when they seemed to be playing for

all the players that had come before and all the ones who would come afterward.

It was for me.

Growing up around here in the 1950s and ’60s taught me many lessons about sports, even if I didn’t always

know I was learning them.

It taught me that your team doesn’t always win, and your dreams don’t always come true, and becoming a

sportswriter taught me that there usually is more true emotion in a losing locker room than there is in the

winning one, something that took me by surprise. It also taught me that you remember the losing locker

rooms the most, as if you can almost smell the defeat in the air.

That’s where the true emotion is, the one that hurts.

So, here we are in the beginning of August, a month where the standings don’t lie. August, where the Red

Sox’s fate seemingly is already determined, their season all but already in the casket, just waiting to be

buried.

So, here we are in this Red Sox season that never really took off, this Red Sox season that no one thought

would be this bad, this Red Sox season that now seems to have already gone on too long, even if it’s only

early August. In all the important ways, it’s already been a strange season, as if the Sox weren’t

emotionally ready for it to begin, for whatever reason.

Is there still time for a comeback for the ages?

I suppose.

But I wouldn’t bet the hacienda on it.

So far, anyway, this year’s Red Sox team seems to have left its heart at last year’s World Series. Its

mediocre start. Its lack of passion. The sense the team feels it can turn on the real juice anytime they want

to — all the potential stumbling blocks for a World Series winner.

Or maybe this is simply the price tag.

So, bang the drum slowly.

Odds are there’s no need to wait.

Back problems for J.D. Martinez becoming a sore spot for Red Sox

Bill Koch

Red Sox manager Alex Cora confirmed one of the worst-kept secrets around the club Tuesday afternoon.

J.D. Martinez’s back has been an issue throughout most of the 2019 season and has affected the way Boston fills out its daily lineup.

Martinez was a late scratch prior to Monday’s 7-5 win over the Royals at Fenway Park. It was the 12th

game Martinez has missed this season, matching his total from his 2018 debut with the club. He returned

for the middle game of the series as the designated hitter and batted third.

“I think the only red flag – if you call it that – is J.D.’s back,” Cora said. “You have to be cautious about

playing him in the outfield.”

Martinez worked as the designated hitter for the 24th time in his last 26 games and the 28th in his last 32.

He’s appeared in the field only twice since the All-Star break and might not do so again in the immediate

future. His bat is too valuable down the stretch should Boston somehow find a way to rally itself into playoff contention – Martinez had hit in six of his last seven games and also drawn eight walks.

“It seems like whenever we play him two or three days – I don’t know if it’s right away, but it seems like

his back gets tight,” Cora said. “I’ve been very careful with that.”

Martinez hasn’t been able to function as what would essentially be a fourth outfielder for the Red Sox. He’s

made just 10 starts in left field and 15 in right field this season, down considerably from the 57 outfield

starts he made last year. Boston entered Tuesday with just 47 games remaining – Martinez isn’t likely to

start at least 32 of them in the field.

“It’s a testament to our medical department,” Cora said. “They do a good job with them. We try to stay away from (batting practice) on the field and taking ground balls. We push things back as far as the buses

(leaving road games) and all that. It’s not all me.”

The troubles started for Martinez in mid-May. He played four of six games in the outfield against Seattle

and Houston at home. Martinez followed by missing an entire four-game series at Toronto, suffering

through an illness the first couple days and back tightness the final two.

Martinez also missed a full four-game series against Tampa Bay the following month in June. He was removed in the fifth inning of a game at Kansas City on June 6 and didn’t play over the weekend after

returning to Fenway Park. The Red Sox lost three of those four games, contributing to their dismal 1-8

home record against the Rays this season.

This winter represents the first of two chances Martinez has to opt out of the five-year, $110-million deal

he signed in free agency with Boston prior to 2018. He turns 32 later this month and would hit the open

market again as a player who just spent basically 80 percent of the previous season as a designated hitter.

Martinez could also opt out after 2020 – he’s due $62.5 million owed to him over the final three years of

his existing deal and $38.75 million over the final two years.

Xander Bogaerts received a night off on Tuesday after playing in 25 straight games out of the All-Star

break. Bogaerts was shut out over the weekend against the Yankees, going 0-for-15. That four-game skid wasn’t enough to dent his overall line in the second half, as Bogaerts finished Monday slashing

.346/.398/.654 with 16 extra-base hits.

“With injuries and moves and all that stuff it’s hard to give guys a rest,” Cora said. “You’ve got to be

realistic, too. They need that. For us to pull this off they need to be fresh.”

Eduardo Rodriguez has developed into a Red Sox workhorse

Bill Koch

Eduardo Rodriguez takes the ball for Wednesday’s series finale against the Royals, and he’ll be expected to work deep into the game.

The 26-year-old left-hander has gradually developed into a workhorse on the Red Sox staff this season.

Rodriguez tops Boston with 135 1/3 innings pitched and has made the same number of starts as Chris Sale

and Rick Porcello at 23. He’s recorded at least one out in the sixth inning in 15 of his last 17 appearances.

“We joke with him – the saying ‘five and dive,’” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said. “And there’s no more

of that. He’s actually looking to go more.”

Rodriguez lasted 6 2/3 innings Friday night at Yankee Stadium after allowing a grand slam to Gleyber

Torres in the bottom of the first. There was no implosion that has marked some starts earlier in Rodriguez’s

career – no surrender after 4 1/3 innings and more runs allowed, for example. He held the Yankees right there in what was eventually a 4-2 loss.

“He has a lot of confidence,” Cora said. “Coming into the season he was healthy for the first time. He was

in great shape – the best shape of his life.”

Red Sox relief pitchers Heath Hembree, Steven Wright battling elbow troubles

Bill Koch

The next two days could be critical regarding the eventual return of Red Sox right-handers Heath Hembree

and Steven Wright.

Both relievers are currently on the injured list, and both are experiencing right elbow issues. Hembree had a

platelet-rich plasma injection early Tuesday and Wright will meet with noted orthopedic surgeon Dr. James

Andrews in Florida on Wednesday.

Hembree’s injection was on the outside of the elbow and meant to combat inflammation. He’s undergone

an MRI over the last week, and that examination revealed no ligament or structural damage. Boston still

expects Hembree to pitch again at some point this season.

“It’s not his ligament,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said. “It’s not the reddest of red flags.”

It’s the second stint on the IL this season for Hembree, and he pitched to a 9.00 earned-run average after his

July 5 return. Hembree’s 20 appearances before being sidelined included a 0.52 ERA, as the 30-year-old

threw the ball as well as he has at any point in his career.

“I would throw one game, and then the next morning it was a little bit crankier than the day before,”

Hembree said Friday in New York. “It was just something I was trying to grind through, and it came to the

point where it wasn’t really worth it anymore.”

Wright hasn’t pitched in a game since July 13 against the Dodgers when he was hit on the right foot by a

Max Muncy comebacker. The knuckleballer was rehabbing at Boston’s spring training home in Fort Myers

when he reported elbow soreness while playing catch this week. Wright turns 35 later this month.

“Throughout the season his knee was good, but his arm – he felt like he could pitch, but he wasn’t at his

best,” Cora said. “He played catch the other day. He didn’t feel too comfortable with it.”

Wright has made just 31 appearances over the last three seasons for the Red Sox, as he and Dustin Pedroia

both underwent the same cartilage restoration procedure on their left knees prior to the 2018 campaign.

Wright pitched to a 2.68 ERA in 20 appearances last year but has turned in an 8.53 ERA in six appearances

this year. Wright has also been forced to sit through a pair of suspensions – 15 games last year for a

domestic assault arrest, 80 games this year after he tested positive for performance enhancing drugs.

“You almost have to take a step back and be like, ‘I’ve really got to cherish the times I do have in the clubhouse,’” Wright said in late June. “It’s that quickly it can be taken away.”

* MassLive.com

Boston Red Sox wild card standings update: Sox back to 6.5 games out after loss to Royals

Chris Cotillo

The Red Sox were back in the loss column Tuesday (Aug. 7), suffering a 6-2 defeat at the hands of the

Royals.

Here’s how that impacts the standings:

5.5 games behind the Rays for the second wild-card spot

7.5 games behind the Indians for the first wild-card spot

14.5 games behind the Yankees in the A.L. East

SCORES:

Royals 6, Red Sox 2

Rays 7, Blue Jays 6 (Rays pick up game on Red Sox)

Athletics 11, Red Sox 4 (Athletics pick up game on Red Sox)

Indians-Rangers postponed (Indians pick up 1/2 game on Red Sox)

Yankees 9, Red Sox 4 (Yankees pick up game on Red Sox)

STANDINGS:

A.L. Wild Card:

Indians: 66-46

Rays: 66-49 (1.5 games behind Cleveland)

____________

Athletics: 65-49 (0.5 games behind Tampa Bay; 2 games behind Cleveland)

Rangers: 58-54 (6.5 games behind Tampa Bay; 8 games behind Cleveland)

Red Sox: 60-56 (6.5 games behind Tampa Bay; 8 games behind Cleveland)

Angels: 56-59 (10 games behind Tampa Bay; 11.5 games behind Cleveland)

A.L. East:

Yankees: 74-39

Rays: 66-49 (9 games back)

Red Sox: 60-56 (15.5 games back)

Alex Cora explains why he left Andrew Cashner in to face Jorge Soler in the sixth inning vs. Royals

Chris Cotillo

With the Royals leading 4-1 and threatening again with a runner on first in the sixth inning Tuesday, Red

Sox manager Alex Cora opted to leave in starter Andrew Cashner to face the dangerous Jorge Soler.

Soler made Cashner pay, hitting his second home run of the game to put Kansas City up, 6-1. The slugger’s

30th homer of the season all but sealed a game the Royals would go on to win, 6-2.

Cora said he liked the matchup between Cashner and Soler even if Soler had homered two innings prior.

“I know he hit a home run in the previous at-bat but it was a matchup we liked,” Cora said. “He threw a slider for a ball, a hanging slider for a strike. We were thinking (Josh) Taylor for the lefty, two batters later.

It just didn’t work out.”

Cashner retired the first eight batters he faced before running into trouble in the fourth, walking Hunter

Dozier before allowing a Soler homer on a first-pitch fastball. After the Soler homer, he allowed three hits

(including a Ryan O’Hearn homer) and had already allowed a run in the sixth in the next turn through the

order.

Cora could have turned to a righty reliever like Marcus Walden or Matt Barnes but instead decided to stay

with Cashner.

“I tried to throw a slider away and I hung it,” Cashner said.

Cashner allowed three homers in the loss and has allowed eight in his first 28 2/3 innings with the Sox

since being acquired in mid-July. He’s 1-4 with a 7.53 ERA in five starts since the trade.

Andrew Cashner allows three homers, Boston Red Sox lose to Royals 6-2

Jason Kates

One day after ending an eight-game losing streak, the Red Sox were back in the loss column.

Starter Andrew Cashner allowed six runs in 5.1 innings, and Jorge Soler hit a pair of two-run home runs as

the Red Sox fell to the Royals, 6-2.

Cashner is now 1-4 with a 7.22 ERA since coming to Boston, and has given up eight homers in five starts.

Before being traded, he had gone 36 consecutive innings without allowing a homer.

Boston’s first run came on an RBI single for Andrew Benintendi in the bottom of the third, scoring Rafael

Devers from second.

A double from Christian Vazquez in the eighth knocked in J.D. Martinez, cutting the deficit to 6-2.

With two outs in the top of the fourth, Soler hammered the first pitch he saw from Cashner out to left field

for a two-run blast to give the Royals a 2-1 advantage.

Kansas City doubled its lead one inning later when Ryan O’Hearn connected on the 10th pitch of his at-bat

against Cashner, sending it to the seats in right field for a solo homer. It added three more insurance runs

off in the top of the sixth, highlighted by Soler’s second long ball of the game.

The Red Sox had no answer for Jakob Junis, who pitched six innings of one-run ball on seven hits and one

walk while striking out four. They left two men on base in three of the first four innings, twice with runners

on first and third.

Michael Chavis provided the Fenway crowd with a web gem in the top of the eighth, robbing Hunter

Dozier of a base hit with a diving grab in shallow center field.

Boston, now 60-56, will look to win the series with a victory tomorrow.

Boston Red Sox bullpen: How Dave Dombrowski’s gross overestimation of three relievers doomed

relief group from the start

Chris Cotillo

Tuesday’s news that Steven Wright is going to see Dr. James Andrews with an elbow issue further exemplifies just how grossly Red Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski overestimated his

internal bullpen options this winter.

Speaking prior to the baseball writers’ dinner in January, Dombrowski identified four candidates-- Ryan

Brasier, Matt Barnes, Tyler Thornburg and Wright-- who could potentially close for the Red Sox this

season. Though he didn’t rule out external additions at that point, he seemed to commit to relying on guys

who, frankly, were unreliable.

“We’re in a position where we’ve got some guys that we think have the ability to form it,” Dombrowski

said. “We’ve got some guys like Ryan (Brasier) and Matt Barnes and maybe Steven Wright that we think

can do it. They’re not proven but I’ve seen a lot of guys who aren’t proven do those jobs.”

He later added: “The one name I did not mention, off the top of my head, was Tyler Thornburg, coming to

camp. We’re interested to see how he does. He has been a closer and he has been a very good closer, in the

past. He is healthy. If he would come back and be and be the pitcher he was in the past, he is a guy who has

done that before.”

115 games into the season, only Barnes has come within sniffing distance of living up to that hype. Brasier

regressed and has been in Triple-A for almost a month, Thornburg was a disaster who was released during

the All-Star break and Wright, in all likelihood, will end his season having only thrown 6 1/3 innings

thanks to an 80-game steroid suspension and a variety of injuries.

The Sox lucked into Brandon Workman-- an up-and-down veteran Dombrowski viewed as someone who

"could come back and do well” while not identifying him as a ninth-inning option-- having a career year

and morphing into their closer for the second half of the season. Other than that, the club’s decision to bank

on unproven options has largely backfired as top options like Brasier, Thornburg and Wright have

disappointed.

“Everyone wants proven,” Dombrowski said in January. “Sometimes, unproven can do the job, too. They

just need the opportunity. I have been in that situation and it has worked well at times. Sometimes, they

don’t work well. It just depends on how they perform. In our circumstances, I don’t think there’s one set

answer. I do know we have the ability to close with the people we have on our team.”

It’s clear that a big-money addition like Adam Ottavino or Zack Britton was never in the cards for

Dombrowski, who has never operated with relief pitching at the top of his priority list. But there also seems

to have been a vast overestimation of who he already had, considering the track record of each pitcher.

Brasier was a lightning-in-a-bottle-type who was phenomenal for a half-season but had zero previous

success in the majors. Thornburg, who cost a lot via trade two winters prior, would have to not only prove

his health but also that his thoracic outlet syndrome had no effect now. And Wright, despite emerging as a

back-end option late last year, had eight career disabled list stints entering the season and a knee that was

balky at best.

The narrative would be much different, of course, if Brasier continued his 2018 pace, Thornburg looked like the Brewers’ version of himself and Wright stayed healthy (and avoided suspension). But the reality is

the Sox went 0-for-3 on trusting their guys and are now forced to try to sneak into a wild-card spot with

Workman, Barnes, converted starter Nathan Eovaldi and rookie lefties Josh Taylor and Darwinzon

Hernandez as their top options.

Fresh off winning a World Series title with what at times looked like a makeshift bullpen, maybe

Dombrowski thought he had seen enough from the guys he had to justify trusting what he had. It’s clear

now that perception came more from projection from reality, resulting in three swings-and-misses the Sox

could never afford.

Boston Red Sox Players’ Weekend: “X-Man”, “Nitro” highlight team nicknames Jason Kates

When the Red Sox head to San Diego for a three-game series with the Padres from Aug. 23-25, their

jerseys are going to look a little different.

For the third consecutive season, every player in Major League Baseball will have a nickname on their

backs as part of Players’ Weekend.

Xander Bogaerts and Nathan Eovaldi are just two of several Red Sox to opt for new nicknames in year

three of the event, choosing “X-Man” and “Nitro”, respectively. David Price also switched from “Slim

Dunkin” to "X" in honor of his son Xavier, while Brock Holt decided to ditch “Brock Star” in favor of “BH.”

Many members of the team like Chris “The Conductor” Sale and J.D. “Flaco” Martinez are sticking with

what they’ve used in the past. Rookie Michael Chavis, however, is already lobbying for a name change.

Red Sox still resting key players like Xander Bogaerts, J.D. Martinez despite large hole in standings

Jason Kates

Red Sox manager Alex Cora consistently preaches the importance of giving his players rest when he feels they need it.

He has not shied away from this philosophy, even during his team’s recent stretch that has them sitting

five-and-a-half games out of a Wild Card spot.

One night after J.D. Martinez was scratched from the lineup with back tightness, Tuesday’s contest versus

the Royals will not feature Xander Bogaerts, who was given the day off by Cora.

“He needs one of those, he’s been playing a lot and yesterday after he scored in the seventh, you could see

that he was dragging,” Cora said. "We talked about it a little last night, talked about it a little this morning. It’s an off day and just be ready for tomorrow.”

Finding the proper equilibrium between providing his players with rest while putting out a lineup that gives

them the best chance to win hasn’t been easy, Cora says.

“You gotta create a balance and basically with injuries and moves and all that stuff, it’s hard to give guys

some rest,” he said. “I think you gotta be realistic too, they need that for us to pull this off, we need them

fresh. You see the opportunity and you go from there.”

With five off days throughout the rest of August, Cora believes it will provide some much-needed relief as

they make a push for the postseason.

"I think the schedule’s gonna help us out towards the second part of the month, but for now we gotta be

cautious and make sure that we keep them fresh,” he said.

Cora highlighted Martinez’s back issues as something they want to continue to monitor moving forward.

“The only red flag if you wanna call it that is J.D.’s back,” Cora said. We have to be cautious about playing

him in the outfield. It seems like whenever we play him two or three days, I don’t know if it’s right away or

later on, but his back gets tight. It’s been easier lately, but at one point the roster is what the roster is."

Heath Hembree injury: Red Sox reliever has PRP injection in elbow, expected to return this season Chris Cotillo

Red Sox reliever Heath Hembree had a platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injection in his right elbow Tuesday,

manager Alex Cora said.

Hembree was placed on the injured list Friday with lateral inflammation in his elbow. Cora said the Sox

expect him to return this season and that there is no ligament damage.

“It’s not on the inside part of the elbow,” Cora said. “It’s the outside part of the elbow."

Hembree spent three weeks on the IL with a right elbow extensor strain from June 14 to July 4 after experiencing forearm tightness while warming up in the bullpen during a game. He returned for 12

underwhelming appearances before returning to the IL and admitted he rushed back the first time around.

“I can’t say (the pain) was ever fully, completely gone,” Hembree said Friday. “It was there, but I felt like I

was good enough to pitch. I would throw one game, and then the next morning it was a little bit crankier

than the day before. It was just something I was trying to grind through, and it came to the point where it

wasn’t really worth it anymore.”

Hembree will be shut down for a period after the PRP injection as the Red Sox determine the next steps in

his rehab process. Tests have not revealed any structural damage and the team does not expect that the righty will need surgery.

Steven Wright injury: Boston Red Sox righty has elbow issue, will meet with Dr. James Andrews

Chris Cotillo

Red Sox knuckleballer Steven Wright is dealing with an elbow injury and will meet with Dr. James

Andrews in Florida this week, manager Alex Cora announced prior to Tuesday’s game.

Wright, who has been on the injured list with a right toe contusion since July 14, has been dealing with

elbow soreness throughout the season, according to Cora. Wright had previously battled left knee issues

and has undergone a series of surgeries over the last two years.

“Throughout the season, his knee was good but his arm.... He felt like he could pitch, but he wasn’t at his

best," Cora said. "He played catch the other day and didn’t feel too comfortable with it. We’re going to

send him down there to see Dr. Andrews to see if there’s anything going on.”

Wright’s left knee limited him to only 53 2/3 innings last season and caused him to undergo an arthroscopic

procedure in November. He was suspended for the first 80 games of this season for violating Major League

Baseball’s performance-enhancing drug policy and made only six appearances (8.53 ERA in 6 1/3 innings)

before being hit in the toe with a Max Muncy line drive on July 13.

Wright’s status for the rest of the season is unknown.

“We’ll see what they say tomorrow,” Cora said.

* The Lawrence Eagle Tribune

Five Red Sox Takes: Andrew Cashner hasn't been the answer to rotational woes

Chris Mason

After three months of musical chairs in the No. 5 spot, the Red Sox thought they’d finally found some

stability in acquiring Andrew Cashner, but the results have been more of the same.

Cashner was hit hard by the lowly Royals — they left the park three times against him — and Boston fell to

a 40-win team, 6-2. The Sox are now 1-4 when their lone July acquisition takes the mound.

Here are five takes from a lifeless Fenway Park:

1. No Cash

Cashner hadn’t allowed a home run in any of his five outings before being dealt to the Red Sox.

In the five since? Cashner has allowed eight bombs — three multi-homer starts — and his ERA in a Boston

uniform has ballooned to 7.53.

“I’ve just made too many mistakes and they’ve hammered them here when I’ve made them,” Cashner said.

“But I’ve pitched up here for a long time. So I mean this has probably been one of the toughest stretches of

my career. I’ve just gotta get back to what I do well.”

2. Offense does nothing

Xander Bogaerts was given the night off, so the rest of the Sox offense decided to follow suit.

They couldn’t do anything against Royals starter Jakon Junis, who entered the game at 6-10 with a 5.03

ERA. Junis held the best offense in baseball to one run in six innings of work, and they didn’t do much

against the bullpen either, only adding one run. All told, they were 2 for 10 with runners in scoring

position, stranding eight.

Bogaerts or no Bogaerts, the Sox should be teeing off on Kansas City.

3. Darwinzon looks nasty

Darwinzon Hernandez’s transition to the big league bullpen couldn’t have gone any better.

The 22-year-old flamethrower turned in another dominant inning, blowing the Royals away in the ninth and striking out the side. In nine innings out of the ‘pen, Hernandez has yet to allow an earned run, and has

struck out 18.

The Sox could really have something here.

4. Nice night for JT, too

Josh Taylor also had a strong evening in relief of Cashner.

Taylor made quick work of the runner he inherited in the sixth, erasing him with a double-play ball, and

then threw a scoreless seventh. Since July 1, the lefty’s ERA sits at 2.25.

5. Terrible 10-game stretch

Can you remember a more disappointing run than the one the Red Sox are on right now?

After being swept out of the AL East race by the Yankees and Rays, dropping a non-competitive game to

the Royals is a new low-water mark. Kansas City had lost seven straight and they’ve clearly packed it in.

This is the soft spot in the schedule that the Red Sox absolutely need to capitalize on if they’re to have any

prayer of playing in October. They’re now 1-9 in their last 10.

Eduardo Rodriguez has been most reliable Red Sox starter

Chris Mason

Somewhat fittingly, Eduardo Rodriguez’s coming-of-age evening ended with one last childish action.

Rodriguez was brilliant for five innings of Game 3 in the World Series, dicing through the Dodgers with

surprising ease, but finally ran into trouble in the sixth. With two aboard and two out, the young lefty

served up a three-run homer to Yasiel Puig — and then spiked his glove so hard Rob Gronkowski would

have blushed.

His night wound up as something of an afterthought — it was the extra-inning loss that saw Nate Eovaldi turn folk hero — but the outing as a whole was a leap forward for Rodriguez.

“I go back to October, that outing in L.A., we learned a lot from him,” Alex Cora said. “Nobody in the

world thought he was going to be able to pitch the way he pitched there... But we knew that was a great

matchup for us and he proved it. Too bad it finished the way it did, slamming the glove to the ground

before the ball landed, but that was a good one for him as far as confidence.”

That confidence has resonated.

Always blessed with tantalizing potential, Rodriguez is realizing it this season. At 13-5, his 4.19 ERA is the

best on the Red Sox staff, and he’s been remarkably consistent.

Cora believes it’s because he’s embraced who he is as a pitcher; Rodriguez has done it his way.

“I knew he was very talented,” Cora said. “We knew the stuff. I think it’s more about him trusting the stuff,

trusting that these are your best pitches, just throw them. He gets creative here and there, but I think overall,

he’s understanding who he is.

“Coming into the season, I wanted him to detach himself from the veterans as far as on the mound and how

to pitch. I don’t want you to be David (Price) or Chris (Sale) or Rick (Porcello). I want you to be Eduardo

Rodriguez. If you do that, you’ll be fine.”

Rodriguez has out-pitched all three of those veterans this season. The most impressive part of his growth

has been the durability he’s developed.

Until this year, Rodriguez’s m.o. was easily identifiable.

Though he had nasty stuff, the lefty was prone to getting a bit too cute with his pitches, and he’d wind up

going 5 2/3 innings. The pitch count would pile up too quickly and he’d tax the bullpen.

In 2019, Rodriguez leads the Red Sox with 135 1/3 innings. That’s more than Sale, Porcello, and well more

than Price.

Rodriguez has gone at least six in more than half his starts, and is really the only rotation member that has

done his job at a high level with any semblance of consistency.

“We joke with him, actually. You know the saying five and dive?” Cora asked. “There’s no more of that.

He’s actually looking to go more. The other day, he wanted to face one more hitter. I decided no, and I

explained why, but I like the fact that he’s not shying away from it. He wants to be that guy. “

On a staff where he wasn’t supposed to be the guy, Rodriguez has been.

* RedSox.com

Cashner underwhelms again in fifth Boston start

Ian Browne

The Red Sox didn’t expect Andrew Cashner to be a savior when they acquired him from the Orioles three

weeks ago, but they were plenty confident he could provide some much-needed stability in the fifth spot in

the rotation.

Five starts in, Cashner has pitched at a level far lower than he did in Baltimore, and his woes continued in

Tuesday night’s 6-2 loss to the Royals at Fenway Park.

After opening the outing strong with three scoreless innings, Cashner was hit hard the rest of the night,

giving up three homers and six earned runs and exiting after 5 1/3.

Rick Porcello had snapped an eight-game losing streak for the Sox with a much-needed quality start on

Monday night, and the hope was that Cashner could do the same.

Instead, the righty gave up four runs or more for the fourth time in his five starts in Boston.

“I thought I had good stuff. Made three mistakes,” said Cashner. “They hit three home runs. That's kind of

the way it goes. But this is a team that we've got to beat. I've got to be better."

With the Orioles, Cashner was 9-3 with a 3.83 ERA while giving up 11 homers in 96 1/3 innings. It has

been a different story with Boston, where he is 1-4 with a 7.53 ERA while giving up seven homers in 28

2/3 innings.

"I just think I just made too many mistakes and they've hammered them here when I've made them,”

Cashner said. “But I've pitched up here for a long time. So I mean this has probably been one of the

toughest stretches of my career. I've just got to get back to what I do well. Get back to that and get them on

Sunday."

Jorge Soler did most of the damage against Cashner, hitting a pair of two-run homers to give him 31 on the

season. The light-hitting Ryan O'Hearn (.175 average) added a solo shot in the fifth.

The Red Sox had the first lead of the game thanks to an Andrew Benintendi RBI single in the bottom of the

third.

What they needed in the fourth was a shutdown inning. Cashner put away the first two batters with no

trouble, but his night went downhill after a walk to Hunter Dozier. Soler stepped up next and obliterated

Cashner’s first-pitch fastball over everything in left field -- the Monster, the billboards and for all anyone

knows the entirety of Lansdowne Street.

“The walk before the homer with two outs, and he misfires,” said Red Sox manager Alex Cora. “It’s one

swing for two runs. As you know, in this game you can’t give the opposition one extra out or one extra

hitter with two outs. Lineups are going to make you pay.”

The Red Sox have paid continually of late, losing nine of their last 10 to fall 6 1/2 games back in the AL

Wild Card standings.

“We can’t get the opposition to keep the ball in the ballpark and we’re paying the price,” Cora said. “That’s

the case with Cashner.”

Entering Tuesday, Cashner had 135 starts since Statcast tracking began in 2015 and had allowed a total of

four homers struck at an exit velocity of 110 mph or more in that span. The Royals hit two at that speed against him in the loss.

The Red Sox don’t see much of a dropoff in Cashner’s overall stuff. Instead, they see isolated mistakes. But

that doesn’t make it any less costly.

“We trust him,” Cora said. “Stuff-wise, he’s still throwing the ball well. If we have to make adjustments

mechanically, we’ll take a look at it, but I do feel it’s just location. We saw the walks in the previous one

and today just three pitches. That was it right there.”

Does Cashner feel it is mechanics?

“I don't really know,” he said.

There’s not much Cashner can do except go back to the drawing board and try to rediscover the form he

had in Baltimore.

“Yeah, it's been tough,” Cashner said. “I think over the course of my career I've been good at limiting

damage. I haven't done a good job of that since I've been here. Mistakes are too up in the zone. Haven't

really done a lot of things well but we still have a month and a half left."

“There’s a reason we brought him here,” said Cora. “We believe he’s a good pitcher. We see flashes of his stuff and what he can do.”

With where the Red Sox are in the standings at this point in the season, they’re going to need more than

flashes from Cashner -- not to mention the entire starting rotation.

Hembree, Wright not expected to return soon

Ian Browne

Injuries to Red Sox righty relievers Heath Hembree and Steven Wright have reached the point where you

shouldn’t expect to see them pitching anytime soon.

Hembree received a PRP (platelet-rich plasma) injection for his ailing right elbow on Tuesday.

Wright, who hasn’t pitched since getting smoked on the left foot by a line drive against the Dodgers on July

13, has an appointment on Wednesday with Dr. James Andrews in Pensacola, Fla., to get his right elbow

examined.

There was a time earlier in the season when Hembree was Boston’s most effective option in relief. But he

went on the injured list June 14 with a right elbow extensor strain and didn’t pitch well when he returned,

showing diminished velocity. Hembree went back on the IL with right-lateral elbow inflammation on Aug.

2.

“It’s not on the inside part of the elbow,” manager Alex Cora said of the shot Hembree received. “It’s on

the outside part of the elbow. It’s not his ligament. It’s not like, the reddest of red flags, I guess.”

There is no timetable for Hembree. But Cora added, “We’ll see, but we expect him to pitch this season.”

The Red Sox won’t be sure if Wright can return until after his visit with Dr. Andrews.

The knuckleballer has had a disjointed last three seasons to say the least. Wright made just five starts in

2017 before undergoing cartilage replacement surgery on his left knee.

The recovery from that major surgery limited Wright to 20 appearances last season, most of them in the

bullpen.

He was suspended for the first 80 games of this season for violating MLB’s drug policy. Wright was able to

pitch in just six games before his injury against Los Angeles.

“Throughout the season, his knee was good, but his arm was kind of like, he felt like he could pitch but he

wasn’t at his best,” Cora said. “He played catch the other day. He didn’t feel too comfortable so we’re

going to send him down there and see Dr. Andrews to see if there’s anything going on.”

Nitro Nate highlights Players’ Weekend nicknames

On Tuesday, MLB announced the return of Players’ Weekend for a third straight season. It will take place Aug. 23-25, when the Red Sox will be in San Diego.

A top candidate for best nickname for a Red Sox player is “Nitro” for flame-throwing reliever Nathan

Eovaldi.

As you might have guessed, the nickname -- first given to Eovaldi by his high school coach Mike Rogers --

was bestowed on Eovaldi due to his explosive fastball.

“It was given to me a long time ago and I’ve just kind of kept it with the fastball and how hard I throw,”

said Eovaldi. “I threw hard in high school. I wasn’t as consistent as I am now, but I could still get it up there. I had a couple of nicknames throughout the years.”

Shortstop Xander Bogaerts, who was “X” for the original Players’ Weekend and Bogie last year, has

switched it up to X-Man. David Price is going with “X” in honor of his young son Xavier. Cora was “AC”

the last two years but is switching to “Skipper.”

Bogaerts gets a rare day off

All-Star shortstop Bogaerts, who leads the Red Sox with 111 starts in the team’s first 115 games, was given

a night to rest on Tuesday.

Bogaerts played in the first 25 games of the second half, during which the Red Sox have had just one day off. The last game in which Bogaerts didn’t play was on July 6 at Detroit.

“Yeah, he needs one of those,” said Cora of the rest day. “He’s been playing a lot. Yesterday after he

scored in the seventh or the eighth, you could see he was dragging. We talked a little about it last night and

this morning. Just an off-day and be ready for tomorrow.”

The good news was that slugger J.D. Martinez was back in the lineup after missing Monday with tightness

in his back. Mookie Betts, who left the game in the eighth inning Monday with a left shin contusion, was in

the leadoff spot.

* WEEI.com

Dave Dombrowski reportedly 'isolating himself' in Red Sox front office

Alex Reimer

It’s lonely at the top –– or if you constructed the most expensive team in baseball and it seems destined to

miss out on the playoffs entirely.

Red Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski has “increasingly isolated himself” in the front

office, according to the Boston Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy. The longtime columnist writes the decorated

executive has “few friends inside Fenway’s walls” and primarily surrounds himself with friends Frank Wren and Tony La Russa, both of whom he brought into the organization.

Shaughnessy predicts Dombrowski will be the fall man for the Red Sox’ disappointing title defense, which

has spiraled downward in the aftermath of their inactive trade deadline last week. Boston has lost five of six

games since then and seven of eight overall.

The biggest reason for the Red Sox’ extended slide has been their atrocious starting pitching, and it is

difficult to blame Dombrowski for that (though signing Chris Sale to a five-year, $145 million deal before

the start of the season continues to look more disastrous with each passing day). But the trade deadline

offered a clear opportunity to upgrade the Sox’ woefully undermanned bullpen. Dombrowski passed on the

chance, just like he did all offseason.

On NESN Tuesday, Dombrowski downplayed the pen’s struggles. “I have gone through the blown saves,

and I know we’ve had a number of them, but really it hasn’t cost us as many games as what you would

think throughout the year. Our bullpen basically has been fine,” he said.

The Red Sox have blown 20 saves this season. It is the fifth-highest total in the league.

In an interview with Rob Bradford from London in late June, principle owner John Henry expressed

dissatisfaction with his club’s lackluster performance, and appeared to place some of the blame on

Dombrowski.

"We’re already over budget and we were substantially over our budget last year and this year. We’re not

going to be looking to add a lot of payroll,” he said about the team’s prospects at the trade deadline. “And

it’s hard to imagine fielding a better team. If we play up to our capabilities we’ll be fine.”

If the Red Sox do jettison Dombrowski this winter, Shaughnessy suggests they could hire executive vice

president Eddie Romero, who’s served as the vice president of international scouting for many years. It

could be the right choice, especially if the Sox are heading towards some sort of retooling.

Though Dombrowski’s contractual status hasn’t been confirmed, it’s expected he’s signed through next

season.

Andrew Cashner experiencing one of the roughest stretches of his career

Nick Friar

Rick Porcello did his best to set the tone for the Red Sox starting rotation on Monday, but Andrew Cashner

could not keep things rolling on Tuesday. The mid-season acquisition got tattooed for six runs in 5 ⅓

innings on two walks and seven hits, three of which were home runs.

Tuesday’s outing marks back-to-back performances in which Cashner has given up six or more earned runs

since joining the Red Sox. In his 17 starts with the Orioles this year, Cashner gave up the same amount of

runs twice.

“I just think I just made too many mistakes and they’ve hammered here, when I’ve made them,” Cashner

said. “But I think its — I’ve pitched up here (at the big league level) for a long time. This has probably

been one of the toughest stretches of my career. I just got to get back to what I do well and get back to that

and get them on Sunday.

“I think over the course of my career I’ve been good at limiting damage. I haven’t done a good job of that

since I’ve been here. Mistakes are too up in the zone. Haven’t really done a lot of things well. But we still

have a month and a half left.”

Alex Cora also emphasized Cashner isn’t “executing his pitches” — a phrase that never gets old.

Look, missed locations happen. But if that’s the point of emphasis with Cashner, and it’s not a flaw in

Boston’s strategy, then it’s fair to think there’s some mechanical issue. It could be something minor that’s

only popping up frequently enough where it’s a problem a few times per game. Either way, something

different has gone on with Cashner since he left Baltimore.

When asked if the issue was mechanical or something along those lines, Cashner simply said, “I don’t

really know.”

Cora said the Red Sox will look into whether or not there’s a mechanical issue, so someone’s on top of the

situation.

Dave Dombrowski: Red Sox bullpen ‘basically has been fine’

Nick Friar

The Mets, Padres, A’s and Cubs all have one thing in common: they are the only teams with more blown

saves than the Red Sox this season, who entered Tuesday’s game with 20. Boston has converted 52.38

percent of its save opportunities in 2019.

In case those numbers don’t make it abundantly clear — or you just turn the game off before any Red Sox relievers enter the fray — the bullpen has been a problem. Dave Dombrowski, however, doesn’t seem to

think that’s the case.

While appearing on NESN’s “Red Sox First Pitch” before Tuesday’s game against the Royals,

Dombrowski explained his stance.

“I have gone through the blown saves, and I know we’ve had a number of them, but really it hasn’t cost us

as many games as what you would think throughout the year. Our bullpen basically has been fine,” he said.

“And late in the game, (Brandon) Workman did a good job yesterday closing the game, (Nathan) Eovaldi

gave up the home run, (Matt) Barnes, I think is a little bit tired probably right now after the number of

pitches he had thrown, but all-in-all he has pitched very well for us all year.

“So when we get to that point with those guys, and then you fill in with the two young lefties (Josh Taylor

and Darwinzon Hernandez) and (Marcus) Walden has done a good job in long relief, we have been fine.

But really, our club, if we are going to thrive, and thrive well, it’s going to be because of our starting

pitching.”

He may be a bit off about the bullpen, but Dombrowski is right about the team’s starting pitching. Red Sox

starters have been as much of an issue throughout the majority of the season as the relievers — and may

even be Boston’s primary problem at this point.

Steven Wright headed to see Dr. James Andrews due to elbow issue Rob Bradford

The foot and knee are no longer the only physical problems for Steven Wright.

Red Sox manager Alex Cora announced Tuesday that Wright, who has been on the injured list since July

14 with a right toe contusion, is headed to Pensacola, Fla. to be looked at by Dr. James Andrews due a sore

right elbow.

Wright has felt the discomfort in his elbow since May.

The knuckleballer made six appearances with the Red Sox before being hit with a line drive on his foot,

allowing six runs on 11 hits over 6 1/3 innings.

In other injury news, Heath Hembree was scheduled to undergo a PRP injection on the outside of his right

elbow Tuesday night. Hembree went on the injured list Friday due to continued discomfort in his elbow.

Cora said he expects the reliever to return this season.

* NBC Sports Boston

Dombrowski built the last great Red Sox team, but the next one will require a change in leadership

John Tomase

Dave Dombrowski's system of team building can best be described as blunt force trauma. See player, grab

player, don't get too bogged down in the details; if a door ends up knocked off its hinges, send a repairman.

The sledgehammer approach broke a two-year cycle of underachievement and produced the greatest team

in Red Sox history. Dombrowski sacrificed a considerable amount of both prospect and financial capital to

acquire Craig Kimbrel, David Price, Chris Sale, and Nathan Eovaldi, but there's no questioning the results

in a magical 2018. One hundred and eight wins and a World Series title? Mission bleeping accomplished.

Now comes the hard part, and it requires a defter touch. Replace that sledgehammer with a scalpel, toss the

McMansion blueprints for a farmhouse demanding ground-up vision, replace those Mike Tyson haymakers

with Floyd Mayweather's artistry.

That's the task facing the Red Sox and a roster that will soon be in transition. Does Dombrowski sound like

the man for that job?

Not from here.

His security is a natural topic of conversation given his cratering team. The Red Sox lost for the ninth time

in 10 games on Tuesday night, dropping a 6-2 decision to the woeful Royals without putting up much of a

fight.

They're hopelessly out of the division race, plummeting in the wild-card race and on the verge of turning

September into draft pick tankathon. While it's true that none of us saw this coming, it's also accurate that

Dombrowski's job was to recognize warning signs over the winter and take bold action.

He instead followed the path of least resistance, re-signing World Series heroes Eovaldi and Steve Pearce

despite red flags, extending Sale before even seeing him pitch in a real game following last season's

shoulder injury, and assuming internal solutions such as Tyler Thornburg and Steven Wright could mitigate

the loss of closer Craig Kimbrel and setup man Joe Kelly. File each of those decisions under, "Disaster."

A year remains on Dombrowski's contract, but the wolves are already circling. The Globe's Dan Shaughnessy reported on Tuesday that Dombrowski has walled himself off from most of baseball

operations except trusted advisors Frank Wren and Tony La Russa, and will likely be fired this fall. (For

what it's worth, Dombrowski left his box after the loss Tuesday night with a trio of Theo Epstein holdovers

-- senior VP of operations Raquel Ferreira and assistant GMs Brian O'Halloran and Eddie Romero.)

The implication is that Dombrowski will lose his job for reasons relating to personality, but in reality, he

can be judged harshly on performance, too.

Signing Eovaldi to a $68 million extension despite his long history of underperformance and injury was a

mistake that hamstrung the roster, especially following April surgery that left the team without a fifth

starter. Eovaldi's replacements averaged three innings a turn for three months before the acquisition of

Andrew Cashner, who dropped to 1-4 on Tuesday with a 7.54 ERA. As a beloved broadcaster might say, "Yuck."

Signing Sale to a $145 million extension despite his own history of second-half fades -- not to mention last

season's shoulder injury that left him mostly useless until the final three outs of the playoffs -- was an easy

first-guess. The extension doesn't even kick in until 2020. Imagine signing a free-agent starter solely for his

decline years. There's no easy way out of that one, especially now that Magic Johnson isn't running the

Dodgers anymore. Ownership has every right to feel queasy.

These rankings provide a grim assessment of Red Sox' prospects and farm system

World Series hero David Price delivered when it mattered most, but he has otherwise proven a remarkably

poor fit for Boston. Even knowing what Price would deliver last October, it's hard to imagine John Henry would shell out another $217 million if offered a mulligan.

Those three pitchers will almost certainly comprise the top of the rotation next year, and if that doesn't put a

lump in your throat, nothing will.

That's on Dombrowski. So is a farm system that's in the process of being rebuilt behind promising

prospects infielder Tristan Casas and right-hander Bryan Mata, but is bereft of talent in the upper levels,

which is why the bullpen has seen a parade of Joshes and Ryans and Mikes fail to stem the bleeding.

The next Red Sox GM faces some pivotal decisions. Should Mookie Betts be extended or traded? If J.D. Martinez opts out, do you sign him long-term? Is it worth trying to find a taker for Price? Can budding

superstar Rafael Devers be signed to an extension? Is Jackie Bradley Jr. worth keeping? Who replaces Rick

Porcello's innings? Is Brandon Workman a solution at closer or will resources need to be spent on a

fireman? Is Andrew Benintendi a part of the future or a lure for pitching?

That's a very different job than the one Dombrowski inherited from Ben Cherington almost exactly four

years ago. What ownership must ask itself is if he's the right man for the new challenge, or if it's time to

find his replacement.

The next great Red Sox team is going to require a chisel, not a bulldozer, and Dombrowski's wearing a hard

hat.

* BostonSportsJournal.com

Andrew Cashner merely the latest in a series of bad decisions for Red Sox

Sean McAdam

It should go without saying that very little has gone according to plan for the Red Sox in 2019.

They thought their rotation would carry them; instead, it’s been their albatross.

They believed their bullpen was adequate; it’s been consistently below league average.

They brought back World Series stars Steve Pearce and Nathan Eovaldi; both players have missed

extensive time with injuries and haven’t contributed much when healthy.

The list goes on and on.

Call it what you will: poor evaluations, bad judgment, or just bad luck. But time after time, the Red Sox

have been done in by their decision-making process.

And now, that characterization extends toward their lone in-season acquisition.

The Sox famously stood pat at last week’s trade deadline, eliciting frustration from the fan base, and just

maybe, the clubhouse, too, though no players have expressly said the team was disappointed by the front

office’s inactivity.

But a few weeks before the July 31 deadline, the Sox made a move of consequence, trading for Baltimore’s

Andrew Cashner. At the time, it looked like a shrewd acquisition — Cashner had gone 9-3 with a 3.83

ERA, pitching in front of a god-awful team and pitching in the bandbox that is Oriole Park at Camden

Yards.

If you could pitch in a hitter-friendly environment with little support — offensively or defensively — then

surely he would thrive, pitching for a playoff contender.

The need for starting pitching depth was obvious, and Dave Dombrowski jumped the line a little, obtaining

Cashner three weeks before the deadline. The Red Sox had understandably seen enough of the likes of

Hector Velazquez, Josh Smith, Ryan Weber and Brian Johnson.

That, and the realization that it was going to take a long while for Eovaldi to work his way back into the

rotation. Getting an experienced pitcher in the middle of one of his better seasons, with no guaranteed

contractual obligations beyond this year, seemed like a smart move.

Until it wasn’t. After allowing six runs in 5.1 innings in Tuesday’s 6-2 loss to the woeful Kansas City Royals, Cashner had provided the Red Sox with five starts. They’ve lost all but one of them and Cashner’s

ERA in that span is a hideous 7.53.

There’s little mystery as to the problem: Cashner has proved unable to keep the ball in the ballpark. After

allowing only 11 homers in his first 17 starts with Baltimore, Cashner has now yielded seven in five

outings for the Sox, including three Tuesday night, accounting for all but one of the runs with which he was

charged.

Both Cashner and Alex Cora noted that the pitcher actually exhibited his best fastball since coming to

Boston, but that didn’t stop Jorge Soler from hitting one out in the third inning to give the Royals a lead

they wouldn’t relinquish. (The second and third homers came on a changeup and a slider respectively,

neither particularly well-located.)

For what they’ve been getting from Cashner so far, the Red Sox could still be running out journeyman like

Smith or Weber, or taking a look at some of the younger arms in the system, while still holding on to the

two teenage prospects from the Dominican Summer League they sacrificed to the Orioles in order to get

Cashner.

Did the Red Sox not do their homework? That’s doubtful. The Sox had scouts watching Cashner in the

weeks prior to the deal, and watched him run off a series of five starts in which he allowed more than two

runs just once. And these weren’t cupcakes, either — Cashner either beat or pitched well enough to beat

Houston, Oakland and Cleveland in that run-up to the trade.

And still, the deal has backfired. It’s difficult to say that it’s caused the team’s meltdown over the last 10

days, since there are plenty of others who are culpable there, including Cashner’s rotation-mates who were

here before him.

But it’s as if there’s an infectious virus at Fenway in 2019, poisoning everything. Each personnel decision

seems to blow up in the team’s face.

That’s not to excuse the errors made by the organization’s evaluators. When a team reveals itself to be

thoroughly mediocre over more than two-thirds of the regular season, the poor results can’t be regarded as

a fluke.

Still, a mere season after which seemingly nothing went wrong for the Red Sox, 2019 has shown itself to be the exact opposite. From the decisions made in the winter, to the plans set forth in spring training, and the

in-season personnel moves designed to turn things around, this is the season in which nothing — Andrew

Cashner included — has turned out as expected.

BSJ Game Report: Royals 6, Red Sox 2 – Cashner victimized by long ball in loss to KC

Sean McAdam

Cashner can’t keep the ball in the park: Andrew Cashner’s principal problem since joining the Red Sox has

been the long ball. He gave up two in his first start and two more in his second. Then, after not allowing

any over his next two starts, he was rocked for three Tuesday night — two by Jorge Soler. “I thought I had good stuff,” said Cashner. “I made three mistakes, they hit three home runs. That’s kind of the way it goes.

I just think I’ve made too many mistakes and they’ve hammered them here.” Cashner has allowed nearly as

many homers (seven) in five starts with the Sox as he did (11) in 17 starts with the Orioles. And it’s not as

if Camden Yards is some roomy, pitcher-friendly ballpark – the ball jumps out of there, especially in the

warm-weather months. But since arriving in Boston, Cashner has been susceptible to homers, and that’s

been costly.

Runners in scoring position staying in scoring position: For the better part of the last few months, the Sox

have been teeing off on opposing pitchers when they have runners on base, and in particular, when they have runners at second and/or third. The Sox came into Tuesday, in fact, third in all of baseball in batting

average (.285) with RISP. But since their long losing streak began in the middle of the last homestand, that

skill has seemingly deserted them. On Tuesday, they were a mere 2-for-10 in such at-bats and in the last

seven games overall, they’re just 8-for-48 (.167). They had runners at first-and-third in the second and

failed to get a run in. In the fourth, they had first-and-second with two outs and stranded both. “I don’t

think it’s (guys pressing at the plate),” offered Alex Cora. “We expanded the (strike) zone today. There

were some pitches on the edges of the zone and you can’t do damage there. I think we swung at a lot of

pitches out of the zone or at the edge of the zone that you can’t do damage with.”

Hernandez impressive again: By the time Darwinzon Hernandez took the ball in the ninth, the Red Sox

were already trailing by four, so this was far from a high leverage spot. And, let’s face it, the Royals don’t

possess one of the more imposing lineups in the league. But still, Hernandez looked sharp in striking out the side — the first two swinging and the last looking. He’s not allowed an earned run in the 10 relief

appearances he’s made since being recalled from Pawtucket. Even more impressive, Hernandez is

averaging two strikeouts per inning in that span, fanning 18 hitters in nine innings. All together, Hernandez

has struck out 42.6 percent (29-of-68) of the hitters he’s faced in the majors this season and is averaging

18.2 strikeouts per nine innings. Control continues to be an issue (he’s walked seven in the last nine), but

there are times when the rookie lefty simply overmatches big-league hitters.

TURNING POINT: Shutdown innings continue to be an issue for the Red Sox. After they took a 1-0 lead

in the bottom of the third, it took no time at all for Cashner to hand the lead over to the Royals. Trouble

began with a two-out walk to Hunter Dozier and continued with a two-run homer to Soler. The Sox never

led again.

ONE UP

Christian Vazquez: Vazquez banged out two hits and knocked in a run, and in the process, set a career high

for most hits in a season (97).

ONE DOWN

Mookie Betts: He worked a walk in the fourth, but otherwise wasn’t a factor offensively as the Red Sox

couldn’t get anything going at the top of their lineup.

QUOTE OF NOTE:

“This has probably been one of the toughest stretches of my career. I’ve just got to get back to what I do

well.” – Andrew Cashner.

STATISTICALLY SPEAKING

Jackie Bradley Jr. tied for the team lead in outfield assists when he threw out Whit Merrifield attempting to

stretch a single into a double in the first.

Since being recalled on June 14, Josh Taylor has a 2.25 ERA over his last 23 appearances.

Marcus Walden hasn’t allowed a hit to the last 20 batters he’s faced.

The loss snapped an eight-game winning streak against the Royals. UP NEXT: The Red Sox and Royals wrap up their series Wednesday at 7:10 with LHP Eduardo Rodriguez

(13-5, 4.19) vs. RHP Glenn Sparkman (3-7, 5.58)

* The Athletic

The inside story of FSG’s love affair with Liverpool and the Boston Red Sox

Simon Hughes

Liverpool are European football champions and the Boston Red Sox are the most recent winners of

baseball’s World Series, yet the firm that can currently claim to be the most effective cross-sport owners on

the planet do not have a central office. It helps that the home of the second-largest shareholder is just

around the corner from the biggest one in Brookline, Massachusetts.

By public road, Mike Gordon lives just a four-minute walk away from John W Henry, Fenway Sports

Group’s controlling influence. But a private footpath means the pair can be in discussion, face to face,

inside 90 seconds without anyone knowing, such is the level of privacy in the surrounding terrain, where

the trees are so tall there is almost a permanent canopy of protection from the sky and the shade beneath

can slip into darkness.

Few in Boston in a position to know about Gordon are able to identify him.

“Who?” asked one Red Sox fan in Fenway Park’s Bleacher Bar on a Friday night, as he sat in front of a big

screen drinking cold beer.

“The name, yes, but I wouldn’t know what he looked like,” admitted Bob Ryan, a longtime journalist at the

Boston Globe.

It is said Gordon, wearing a cap, attends games at Fenway Park, the famous home of the Red Sox, without

being recognised. In Liverpool, where his conclusions are critical, he could walk the streets without anyone

stopping him.

Day to day, Gordon operates his own office not far from Fenway. He chose not to be based at the ballpark

because he figured the space would give him the independence he needed to see things clearer than he

might otherwise. Some of the biggest decisions relating to Liverpool FC are made in an unprepossessing

building in the middle of a stretch of shops, sandwiched between a small regional bank and a sports bar

serving Asian food and craft ale.

The third floor represents the highest in the development and a lift takes its time to rise through the levels.

There are three doors in the reception area and on one of them in frosted lettering, like a private detective’s

door, the Gordon family name is inscribed.

On a Monday morning, the blinds are down and you can see into his room, which has family photographs

on a wall behind a large wooden desk where an LFC ‘Champions of Europe’ mug acts as a reminder of the interests that are dealt with there.

In the hallway there is a bigger clue: a large print of Anfield and Fenway Park, with the two arenas blurring

into one another in the middle. The picture includes imagery from a game between Liverpool and Arsenal

on the opening day of the 2010-11 season, just five days before Henry set in motion his attempt to buy the

club. It was used in the presentation which convinced a Liverpool FC panel that FSG would be good

owners. Gordon liked it so much, he had it shipped back from the UK.

He had been a follower of Italian football from afar, growing up in Wisconsin where his first job was at

County Stadium, the home of the Milwaukee Brewers. Gordon was not particularly tall or powerful and

found it hard carrying 115lb of peanuts, popcorn and hotdogs around the terraces, though the experience of working in sport did make him think how wonderful it would be to be involved at a higher level one day.

His father had died in his senior year at school. Bud Selig was the owner of the Brewers and a family

friend. Gordon’s siblings had studied at the University of Wisconsin but thanks to Selig’s guidance and

contacts, he enrolled at Tufts University in Boston.

The relationship with Selig proved to be a key one in Gordon’s life. After graduating from Tufts, he joined

Fidelity Investments in 1987. There he met Jeff Vinik, someone he considers among the world’s greatest

investors. Nine years later, he and Vinik left to form their own firm, Vinik Asset Management, which

yielded the sort of finance which made it possible to purchase a sports club. In the autumn of 2001, Gordon and Vinik tried to buy the Red Sox with Frank Resnek but missed out, their bid falling away before the last

stage.

When Henry prevailed, Selig contacted him, suggesting Gordon would make an ideal partner. Gordon

asked his other partners for their blessing to go and this was when New England Sports Ventures was

formed, later to become Fenway Sports Group.

Selig described Gordon as, “just an outstanding young man.” He was, according to Selig, “the kind of

owner that commissioners want in their sport.”

Gordon travels back from the Champions League final with manager Klopp ( Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC

via Getty Images) The New York Times had been the second-largest shareholder in FSG until 2011 but both parties agreed it

was no longer a strategic fit. Gordon bought the majority of those shares and when, in 2013, he and Vinik

reduced the interest in their hedge fund, Gordon became responsible at Liverpool.

Henry has described Gordon as the most private of all his business partners. He saw something of himself

in him, though Gordon was a better communicator who didn’t mind picking up the phone to sort something

out quickly. Like Henry, he watches and listens, gathering as many opinions as possible to challenge his

own view.

Quietly, he introduced himself at Melwood, Liverpool’s training ground. Henry’s words had stirred a

lasting impression of the way things were organised at Liverpool by describing a “transfer committee” which led the club’s recruitment operation and this led to uncertainty about who was actually in charge.

One of Gordon’s first tasks was to find a solution and this is when he became close to Michael Edwards.

Gordon saw in Edwards what Larry Lucchino once saw in Theo Epstein who became the Red Sox general

manager at 28 years old: a young unknown who was willing to say what he really thought but backed his

arguments up with data to prove his points.

The relationship between Gordon and Edwards stood firm despite fierce criticism of Liverpool’s

subsequent transfer activity, especially after the summers of 2014 and 2015. Though manager Brendan

Rodgers was sacked and Edwards’ role became a matter of public debate, Gordon never questioned

whether the former Peterborough United reserve midfielder, brought to the club by the previous sporting

director Damien Comolli from Tottenham, was up to the job.

The mood at Liverpool changed with the appointment of Jurgen Klopp. Gordon was the one from FSG who

picked up the phone and spoke to Marc Kosicke, Klopp’s agent, inviting the pair to Manhattan. Rodgers

had gone along with a lot of the calls made by Edwards, even though he sometimes disagreed, and

complained later. Gordon wanted to know whether Klopp and Edwards could work together and have the

sort of conversations that involved constructive debate and less post-fact revisionism.

“Speaking your mind and disagreeing at Liverpool isn’t just allowed,” Gordon told Klopp, who offered a

pregnant pause and raised an eyebrow, in Manhattan. “It is required.”

Joe Januszewski was raised in a military family and as a child became accustomed to moving around a lot. Though there was not one place to call home, he remembers his earliest years in Heidelberg fondly. West

Germany were hosts and winners of the 1974 World Cup and that summer was spent with a football

pretending to be Gerd Muller on the street just outside his apartment building.

The Januszewskis returned to the United States in Utah, where access to the game in the 1980s “essentially

ran out” in terms of playing and watching.

Januszewski’s interest lay dormant until he enrolled at the University of Texas, spending lots of time of

time in a pub listening to the conversations of British ex-pats – including Liverpool supporters originally from Merseyside. They would tell stories of Anfield’s European nights, and Januszewski’s father loved the

Beatles. An interest slowly developed into an affection. In 1989, he witnessed the horrific scenes from

Hillsborough from afar and this led to an emotional connection, an empathy that wasn’t there previously.

The rise of the internet allowed him to follow what was happening at Liverpool on a day-to-day basis. His

first match at Anfield was in January 2005 when Wayne Rooney’s 20-yard shot trickled underneath Jerzy

Dudek, earning Manchester United a 1-0 win. He was in Istanbul later that year, where Liverpool won the

European Cup for a fifth time despite trailing AC Milan by three goals at half-time.

“The greatest sporting occasion of my life,” he calls it.

His job was in baseball, leading the partnerships department for the Red Sox. There was more football on US television now, and pubs like The Banshee in the Dorchester area of Boston were opening as early as

7am for live screenings. The air would still smell like last night’s party but he didn’t mind taking along his

eight-month-old son Bear in a sling.

Setanta earned distribution rights for matches and this allowed Januszewski to pay a subscription and

stream matches on his home computer, though the picture quality wasn’t very good. Interest in football, he

felt, was still more of an underground passion in the US but this would soon change when Fox got the

rights and then NBC, bringing its coverage to a much wider audience.

There was a significant summer in 2008 when the European Championship, held in Austria and

Switzerland, became the first tournament where all of the matches were shown live in the US even though there was obviously no participation from an American team.

Visits across the Atlantic had already made Januszewski think about the business side of English football

compared to baseball; to consider the things that were not happening. He describes what he saw as “old

world” in terms of marketing and venue usage “somewhat staid”.

He recognised the potential value in sharing information about the processes he’d introduced to the Red

Sox and so, in early 2006 he convinced owner John Henry to send him to the UK “Willy Loman style” with

his hat in his hand going door to door, attempting to “drum up some new business” by setting up meetings

at clubs such as Hibernian in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Across 10 days there were 12 consultations where he tried to bring “American-style sporting business practices to a different country” and though he felt those listening were impressed, he did not manage to

close any deals, or as he puts it, “nobody was willing to spend money on consultancy upfront – they only

wanted to build it together and pay once they saw the upside, which was never going to work for me

because, well, I had a day job at the Red Sox…”

The experience opened his eyes to the big gaps and the potential enormous financial opportunities, though

it wasn’t until 2010 that others at the Red Sox really started listening.

“Before, I was known as the token soccer geek in the offices – a novelty. Then, something changed.”

Liverpool’s dramatic slide under American owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett was covered in US newspapers. “Like any other fan, I was deeply worried,” Januszewski recalled.

He was sitting in front of the television with a bottle of milk, nursing his second son, Fleet, when the call

came. The Red Sox were away at the Blue Jays in Toronto on Tuesday 10 August 2010 when his cell phone

started vibrating at around 8pm.

It was Larry Lucchino, the president of the Red Sox. Lucchino said, “Joe, I’ve got Tom Werner and John

Henry here … be brief but tell them what’s going on at Liverpool and why it’s a good opportunity.” Henry

and Werner were having dinner in one of Toronto’s executive lounges.

Balancing his child his one hand and the phone in the other, Januszewski could just about hear himself

amid the din of a baseball game. “John said to me, ‘Joe, why don’t you just send us an email?’”

With that, he passed baby monitoring duties to his wife and quickly put together a short synopsis of the

circumstances at Liverpool. Henry read it on an aircraft returning to Boston a couple of hours later and sent

back a reply, copying in the rest of the key members of his working group.

“I think we should have a look at this,” he wrote.

Sixty-six days later, Henry and Werner and other officials from NESV were standing outside the High

Court in London as new owners of Liverpool Football Club. Their first game in charge arrived within 48

hours. Januszewski, who is now working on a new $1.2 billion stadium for the Texas Rangers, has the ticket stub from that match pinned to the billboard in his office.

Following the harrowing 2-0 defeat in the Merseyside derby, Henry was told by one Evertonian, “John, you

bought the wrong club.”

The result left Liverpool second-bottom of the Premier League table.

It was the hottest weekend in Boston since 1991 and the city felt like a no-go zone considering how quiet it

was, with residents fleeing to the coastline to cool off.

Brookline was undisturbed but that is the town’s natural state even though it borders six of Boston’s busiest residential neighbourhoods and Fenway Park, with its nightclubs close by, is just a 10-minute drive away.

Crossing the Perkins Street Bridge that cuts through Olmsted Park and past the enormous Jamaica Pond,

the landscape becomes a dense, forested world. On the rise at the Hellenic College, Greek flags flutter.

There are warnings about trucks not being allowed in and it does make you wonder what homeowners do

when they move.

The house on the turn into Cottage Street is up for sale with Sotheby’s for nearly £2million. It is true that it

is more of a cottage than a house. There are mansions are further up the road, however, hidden away by

private paths and hanging gardens, offering only glimpses of what they are, rather than full views.

John F Kennedy was born here, though on the other side of Brookline village, where there is far less wealth and the homes are modest.

Closer to Cottage Street is the Holy Transfiguration Monastery and a rotary society. The famous Country

Club which hosted the Ryder Cup in 1999 and the infamous ‘Battle of Brookline’ is a mile away. Tom

Brady of the New England Patriots, perhaps the greatest quarterback ever, lives here with his wife, the

Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen.

The squirrels are the size of small cats and peacocks wander freely. There is a stillness and a silence, but

for gentle streams somewhere nearby. A few of the addresses look like lairs for Bond villains, placed

higher up on sharp rockfaces. Two are so vast, it is imaginable the neighbours do not know one another.

Henry talks to then-Boston Red Sox manager John Farrell in 2017 (Adam Glanzman/Getty Images)

John Henry’s home had three layers of protection. A low wall, then a steel fence and a tight row of

incredibly tall Dutch elm. Just about visible beyond was one of three buildings on the 6.3-acre property that

included a pool and a covered outdoor bar with a dozen or stools for entertaining guests. Landscapers were

smartening up the garden. He purchased the land for $16million from the businessman who once rivalled

him for the ownership of the Red Sox, Frank McCourt. Henry decided to raze the 13,000-square-foot

colonial palace and replace it with a $10m stone and cedar-shingle residence.

“An extremely introverted man,” said Bob Ryan, once a part of the media pack called in for scheduled

appointments where Henry, unusually, asked questions of the journalists.

“What we as owners could do better, (he asked) that sort of thing. I’d been in the game for a long time and

no owner had ever done that,” Ryan recalled, realising later that this was Henry doing what he does best:

gaining information from others who might know a bit more than him so he can improve.

Ryan realised it helped Henry enormously that the Red Sox were transformed into a success so quickly –

“when that happens, you get everyone on-side very quickly” – and after that, the meetings became less

frequent before stopping altogether. Though he held a significant public office and turned up at important

civic events, Henry rarely spoke publicly.

Similar descriptions appear in every conversation with people in Boston who know him reasonably enough

to pass fair judgement. He is highly intelligent, hard-working, shy – if not awkward – and reliably distant. With anyone outside his inner circle, he prefers email contact but will sometimes go for weeks before

responding, when he sometimes acts like the issue being discussed is crucial and of the moment – even if

the moment has passed.

“He’s fascinating because he remains a man of mystery,” says Richard Johnson, the curator at the New

England Sports Museum, who remembers turning on the radio and listening to someone whose voice was

unfamiliar speaking at length about the institution he’d just bought, The Boston Globe newspaper. “I

thought, ‘Wow – this guy knows his stuff, I was impressed as hell. It wasn’t until the end that I realised it

was John Henry.”

He’d owned Liverpool for just short of three years when the Globe also became his. Though there had been no public announcement, Henry knew then that Mike Gordon would be keeping a closer eye on what was

happening at Liverpool and this afforded him the time to look at the position of his latest acquisition, which

he was buying independently of his FSG colleagues.

Dan Kennedy, a lecturer at Northeastern University, has written a book entitled “Return of the Moguls”

which details how Henry and other billionaires, including Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, are

changing the landscape of the newspaper business in the United States.

In 2012, the Times Company put the Globe on the market and many of the interested parties were hedge

fund types most likely to strip it of its parts. Kennedy believes Henry moved in for genuine civic reasons.

“He wanted to save the paper.”

Henry got it almost for free. The Times Company had bought just the Globe for $1.1 billion in 1993. Henry

got the paper and a subsidiary paper as well as the website Boston.com and the buildings around the

business for around $70m. Though he’s put money into reviving the newspaper, he was able to sell the

property a few years later for $80m.

Owning the Globe has given Henry a place in the local power structure, which isn’t quite what it used to be

but is nevertheless still important. Kennedy does not think he’s exploited that very much considering the

amount of time he spends in Florida. He describes Henry as, “a resident of Boston, but a part-time

resident.” His second wife, Linda Pizzuti, is more of a day-to-day influence though the paper’s politics

have not changed from the moderately liberal but business-focused orientation of the past.

Henry does not see himself as the same media force as someone like Bezos. Whenever Kennedy has

spoken to him he has got the impression Henry only wants to ensure he does not make a loss, though in

recent times he’s been able to make a profit through a mix of cost-cutting and a successful subscription-

based online platform.

There seems little else for Henry to do in Boston, though apparently he was interested in purchasing the

newly-opened Encore Luxury Casino in the city’s harbour area which may have placed a significant

conflict of interest on the Globe. While editorial has remained consistent in its criticism and praise of the

Red Sox since Henry’s purchase of the Globe in spite of perceptions around interests, questions remain as

to how it might cover the story if the club were looking to make a big tax break, for example. “There has been scrutiny of the Red Sox,” Kennedy says, “but I’m not sure if it has been put to that big a test.”

Management at the Globe has recently been involved in a dispute with the Boston Newspaper Guild and

Henry has hired a law firm known for union-busting. Kennedy believes workers generally felt at the

beginning of Henry’s reign it was better him than anyone else.

“But,” he stresses, “they’d probably also point out they were hoping things would be a little better than they

are.”

In winter 2003, John Henry sat down for breakfast at his home in Florida and prepared to spend half an

hour reading the morning’s newspapers. The back page of each one was leading with the same headline.

Alex Rodriguez, baseball’s most valuable player, was poised to join the Boston Red Sox – the club he owned. This was news to Henry.

The evening before, he had dinner with Tom Hicks at a seafood restaurant near Boca Raton. Hicks had

pushed him for weeks about a meeting. He was the owner of the Texas Rangers, a baseball team that was

failing both in sporting terms and financially. Rodriguez was the club’s biggest asset but nobody was

willing to pay the astronomical price Hicks had set. Henry was spending big and 10 months later the Red

Sox would win the World Series for the first time in 86 years.

He was interested in acquiring Rodriguez but there was no agreement in place and other than his partners at

the Red Sox, nobody knew about the discussions. Yet overnight, somehow the newspapers had their big

splash.

Hicks, with George Gillett, the owner of ice hockey’s Montreal Canadiens, would later buy Liverpool FC

from David Moores and inside three years the club lurched towards the brink of administration.

Supporters on Merseyside were quick to realise that the pair had not overseen a shovel “in the ground in the

next 60 days”, part of their promise for early work on a new stadium. They then learned that the purchase

of the club was a leveraged buy-out: that essentially, Hicks and Gillett were not spending their own money,

leaving the possibility they might flip the business on to another owner at an enormous profit. But only if

they were lucky.

The relationship between Hicks and Gillett began to unravel quickly. Within a year, they were not on

speaking terms and inside year one, Henry was on a flight when Mike Dee, chief executive of the NFL’s Miami Dolphins, handed him the sales prospectus for the football club where relationships were

floundering at every significant level. Though the Red Sox had won the World Series for a second time

under Henry’s guidance just a few months earlier, he believed he already had enough headaches and did

not want another one. “This seemed like a lot of work,” he admitted.

By January 2010, Liverpool’s position under Hicks and Gillett had deteriorated in sporting terms, and at a

baseball owners’ meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, Henry’s wife Linda suggested to her husband that he walk

up to Hicks and ask him if he was selling. Henry was still uncertain he wanted the challenge – Liverpool

was a long way from Boston. Though Pizzuti’s persistence persuaded Henry to slide across the room, Hicks

was already in conversation with someone else so Henry spoke to his son, Tom Hicks Jr who replied with a

flat, “No.”

According to Januszewski, Henry was acutely aware he was getting a “distressed asset” and ultimately, this

became a part of the attraction because Liverpool’s value had dropped so much. “A good deal” was code

for a bargain.

Henry had previously shown an entrepreneurial spirit and was unafraid to try different things even if his

knowledge about them was limited compared to baseball. NASCAR auto racing was one of those and he’d

bought a racing team, Roush, in 2007. His understanding of the possibilities in Premier League football

ultimately changed because of its greater visibility in the US from 2008. “The conversations about soccer

increased from that point onwards but only slightly initially,” Januszewski reflected. “I don’t think it was something he really thought about before, purely because soccer wasn’t a big deal in this country.”

Larry Lucchino also played a role in Henry’s thinking. He had been a partner when Henry and Werner

bought the Red Sox and before that Lucchino was the president of the San Diego Padres. He brought with

him a host of staff from California, including Januszewski.

In a previous working life, Lucchino was employed by the NFL’s Washington Redskins, where his mentor

was Edward Bennett Williams, the famous lawyer whose clients ranged from Frank Sinatra to Hugh

Hefner. Williams emerged as the most successful multisport club owner in the US, starting out at the

Redskins.

Williams helped lead the Redskins to the Super Bowl in 1983, the year his Baltimore Orioles also won the World Series. Lucchino acted as Williams’ litigator but he listened and learned, later passing on what he

knew about running more than one sports club at the same time in different locations to Henry.

Very few people in Liverpool had heard of Henry before. The same, though, could be said in Boston back

in 2001 when Henry’s name was first revealed as a candidate. After Frank McCourt, the parking lot

billionaire, dropped out of the running there were three suitors. One was a well-respected local called Joe

O’Donnell. The second was the Dolan family from New York, the cable television magnates. The third

were Henry’s group. Even though the Dolan’s bid was more than Henry’s and O’Donnell was liked in

Boston, it has since been revealed by the league’s commissioner Bud Selig in his autobiography that he

engineered the agreement for Henry because his move from the Florida Marlins would not only allow the

Red Sox to have a new owner who he considered to be a fine operator, but there were other owners waiting to step into his place in Florida from Montreal – a club Selig wanted to extinguish.

“It was one of the best things that ever happened to any Boston sports franchise,” believes Bob Ryan, who

spent more than 40 years at the Boston Globe writing on multiple sports. Henry’s potential arrival in 2001,

however, was not greeted with such enthusiasm. When it was revealed O’Donnell’s deal was collapsing at

the last minute, the headline across Friday’s edition of the Boston Herald showed a scoreboard reading,

“Visitors 1, Boston 0.”

In 1997, Sports Illustrated printed a special magazine about sporting stories from Boston, a city which was

described as, “the most successful mom-and-pop operation in all of American sports.” Leigh Montville was

a columnist for the Boston Globe but he could have been writing about Liverpool. He noted that the big

cities – New York, Los Angeles and maybe Chicago – “had great teams with great successes, but they are supposed to have success simply by their size, their markets, their power, their clout.”

He illustrated Boston as a “funky overachiever, this little backstreet restaurant in the South End or this

Newbury Street boutique that has succeeded with guile and chutzpah and hard work and energy.” Boston

was, “No nonsense. No Mascots. No dancing girls. No laser beams and fireworks. Just clean white

tablecloths.” In describing the atmosphere, he could have been referring to Anfield’s boot room – a sacred

sort of place where simple magic once fooled everyone. “We somehow developed this secret sauce here –

and never gave out the recipe.”

“Boston is not a place where it’s easy to please people – it’s a tough town,” says Richard Johnson, one of

the few people in the city who already knew about Henry at his point of arrival. The sports museum he runs had hosted a press conference for the senior baseball league in Florida for players aged 40 and over. Henry

was one of the owners, a mathematics-obsessed son of soybean farmers who was born in 1949 in Illinois,

moving to Arkansas a few years later. He liked baseball but he was thin and asthmatic and not cut out to

play. He studied the game, discovering he could calculate batting average and run averages in his head.

This helped lead him towards the financial markets where he became a hedge fund billionaire by predicting

the future.

Bob Allison is a historian and lecturer at Suffolk University in downtown Boston who believes it is

baseball that defines how a Bostonian feels more than any other sport or cultural phenomenon. The Red Sox regularly had outstanding players but rarely had outstanding teams.

Before Henry, “the owners gave the impression they were content to have them come close” but the 2001

season had been terrible for the Red Sox, with stories about unlikeable players hiring 25 different taxis to

the game reflecting the lack of harmony at the club. “Henry didn’t stick his chest out and promise too

much, which previous owners and managers had done,” Allison remembered. “He was very thoughtful and

deliberate.’”

It is not uncommon in the US for owners to move around and invest in places where they previously had

little or no connection. “Sometimes the local owners are the ones that are liked the least,” Allison

recognised. Could a local person with an emotional attachment with the area really find the balance to lead?

As one of Henry’s rivals for the Red Sox, Frank McCourt had promised to build a new stadium in the South

Boston waterfront. It took an outsider in Henry to recognise Fenway Park was actually one of the

attractions. The first big decision facing Henry, indeed, was Fenway. Two years earlier, Dan Duquette, the

Red Sox general manager, called it “economically obsolete” and subsequently led a push for relocation.

It had been built in 1912 “for smaller people born in the 19th century,” Bob Ryan suggested. In 1967, just

as the team began to do well again, then owner Tom Yawkey announced that the best any owner could

hope for from Fenway was to break even. The issue had lingered for more than 30 years by the time Henry

got involved.

Johnson described the “Rubik’s Cube” faced by Henry when he bought both the Red Sox and Liverpool where he had to simultaneously maintain a competitive team while solving a stadium issue; where the

finance in theory would feed back into the playing budget and allow the commercial operation to flourish,

where all of the proceeds would then also go back into the team.

It was realised that Fenway Park and Anfield were the enduring star of both identities and Lucchino’s

favourite line became, “Do no harm.” Though the wisdom of adding seats on the top of Fenway Park’s

Green Monster and the left-field wall was questioned by traditionalists, it helped that progression on the

pitch was achieved almost straight away and “America’s most beloved ballpark” was attached to something

modern and real.

The first major strategic hire was Theo Epstein as the youngest general manager in baseball – a typical left-

field decision from Henry and his partners. Epstein had grown up five minutes away from Fenway Park and his father was a playwright and a professor at Boston University. Further up the family tree, the Epstein

twins were two of the three co-authors of “Casablanca”. Epstein made a series of trades under pressure and

each decision turned out to be the right one.

In successive seasons, the Red Sox met the New York Yankees in the 2003 play-offs, losing narrowly the

first time. Twelve months later, they were 3-0 down in the best-of-seven series before launching one of the

greatest comebacks ever witnessed in baseball. Eleven days later, Boston was celebrating a World Series

for the first time in 86 years after victory in St Louis, flushing away all of the disappointments of the past.

“There had been lots of drama, lots of heartbreak and lots of self-pity around here,”, said Ryan. “When they

won in ’04, people were placing flowers on graves of parents who didn’t see them win. There have been many obituaries over the last 15 years which have read, ‘He lived to see the Red Sox [win] the World

Series.’ The achievement wasn’t framed around the fans themselves, it was framed around their elders, the

dearly departed.”

Johnson witnessed a reaction of modest satisfaction in Henry, an owner who had “surrounded himself with

the best people before proceeding having done his homework figuring out what the best business formula

is.” On the inside, Januszewski concurred – Henry had broken an 86-year curse because he’d got the very

basics right: his recruitment was better than anyone else’s. “Smart people surround themselves with smart

people then they allow them to get on with their job,” he said. Henry and Werner were far from meddlesome owners. Though they trusted staff like Januszewski, they also tested them – poking holes at

plans before coming to agreements. “It was then up to you go and execute it. That’s what Theo and guys

like (manager) Terry Francona did in 2004. It’s also, I think, what Jurgen Klopp did in 2019.”

Spending under Klopp has since increased because of Liverpool’s capacity to spend in its own real

financial world. The strategy at the beginning of Mike Gordon’s time was focused on restoring the team’s

position at the zenith of global football. Privately, Gordon uses a mountaineering analogy, knowing that if a

climber tries to reach the summit in one day he’ll quickly run out of energy and oxygen. Liverpool had to

move up in stages though Gordon also resisted formulaic thinking, recognising that the world adapts in real

time and competitors and their economies change, altering the challenge.

Between 2011 and 2014, Liverpool could attract some of Britain’s best young players but they could not attract the very best established players. Gordon believed bringing in one of those players would have been

a misplaced strategy. Of all the sports clubs and people, he had learned from the experience of the Texas

Rangers under Tom Hicks, who signed Alex Rodriguez to a record contract but did not have the funding to

surround him with talent that would complement him. Gordon figured Liverpool did not yet have the base

to sign big but he also knew that if Liverpool only signed young players in the future they’d never be able

to scale the mountain’s peak. His job was to constantly reassess where the project was, understanding there

would be different kinds of players required as Liverpool progressed.

In the summer of 2018, Liverpool were finally ready to make a leap under Klopp, who had surprised FSG

not only with his democracy but also his intelligence as an executive – realising the financial implications

of his every move. It was soon thought amongst Liverpool’s owners that had Klopp not been a football manager, he could have been a CEO of a Fortune 500 company in the US. Though he was emotionally

perceptive, he also had a very high IQ. He had a keen interest in the structure of the club and how it

operated.

FSG were happy to remain at Melwood, Liverpool’s training ground. But Klopp made them realise changes

were necessary. The decision to move sites from West Derby to Kirkby, where a new facility is expected to

open in the summer of 2020, will cost Liverpool £50 million. Klopp prioritised this over spending £50

million on a new signing. He was building in the interests of club’s long-term future.

With Klopp in charge, Liverpool would reach two Champions League finals in successive years, winning in

2019. The possibilities of this happening increased with the major signings of Virgil van Dijk, Fabinho,

Naby Keita and Alisson Becker. Financially, their arrivals were made possible by the sale of Philippe Coutinho to Barcelona for a Premier League record fee. Liverpool’s unexpected achievements on the pitch

without the Brazilian provided the additional funding to make the signings to both challenge in 2018-19 for

the Premier League title and win their first piece of European silverware since 2005.

It is significant that Steve Lansdown, the owner of Bristol City, who are not a Premier League club, is

wealthier than Henry. So is Newcastle’s Mike Ashley. In terms of resources, FSG as owners are now

somewhere between sixth and seventh in the Premier League standings, behind Fosun, the group that runs

Wolverhampton Wanderers.

It had never been Henry’s intention to splurge vast sums of his own money or that of FSG’s in attempting

to make Liverpool great again. He believed in Financial Fair Play and has always operated on a system of profit and loss, trying to establish balances. In the eight full seasons since his takeover at Anfield,

Liverpool have a net spend of around £400,000 on each point earned in the Premier League which has

equated to an average finish of fourth. In the same period, meanwhile, Manchester City have spent nearly

£1.16million, finishing second on average. The starkest comparison is between Liverpool and Manchester

United, who have a net spend of £1.24million per point. United’s commercial pull is greater than

Liverpool’s and this provides some mitigation. It also reminds of the commercial challenge at Liverpool,

where they have been trying to catch up to United for a quarter of a century.

Billy Hogan joined FSG’s management in 2004, a few months before the Red Sox won the World Series.

Henry and co realised they were onto something with the team and wanted to ensure it remained competitive by exploring as many commercial avenues as possible. Any commercial gain by the Red Sox

commercial team would be pumped straight back into the team. The strategy has been exactly the same at

Liverpool where Hogan has been in place since 2012, operating from a London office which the owners

think makes it easier to run Liverpool in terms of logistics. There is pressure on Hogan because if Liverpool

do not get it right off the field, FSG’s aspirations on the field become much harder to achieve.

Hogan worked in a different system in baseball where capping, in theory, levels the playing field and there

are regional restrictions on what each club can do commercially.

“The league in baseball control most of the rights,” he explained. “A sponsorship deal for the Red Sox with

a drinks company, for example, could only appear in New England. They couldn’t advertise it in New

York. Even in terms of merchandising, all of the revenue goes back into a central baseball fund. When you buy a Red Sox cap, it gets split 30 ways. In football, you have the potential of a global reach with every

contract you sign off and everything goes back into the club.”

At the end of the 2017-18 season, Liverpool’s commercial activities had increased on the previous year but

had still brought in £120 million less than at Manchester United.

When Henry first visited Anfield in 2010 he looked around the ground and asked, “why would you ever

leave here?” Like the Red Sox at Fenway Park, Liverpool remained at Anfield though the club is yet to

receive the full benefits of the new main stand which was delivered through loans from FSG. There may

have been much excitement about the new stand but FSG’s credibility suffered from a mass stadium walk-

out in 2016 when a new pricing structure was revealed and the most expensive ticket would cost £77.

Ian Ayre, the club’s then chief executive had worked tirelessly behind the scenes on the new stand and

though he felt strongly against the new ticket prices he did not argue his case forcefully enough and ended

up defending them in front of the cameras, and his warning that fans should “be careful what they wished

for” came across like a threat. Ayre had been appointed by Tom Hicks and even though he was a

Merseyside native, locals tended not to trust him. With so many comings and goings behind the scenes at

Liverpool’s Chapel Street business offices since 2007, the club had lost its institutional memory and many

supporters believed Ayre was not the right person to put right what had gone wrong, someone who was

always looking over his shoulder because of his links to Hicks, therefore making it more difficult for

Liverpool to move forward.

Though there are similarities between Boston and Liverpool, Gordon particularly is now acutely aware of the dangers of crystallising identities because that leads to misunderstandings and potentially embarrassing

PR mistakes which erodes faith and makes everything that bit harder.

Liverpool, like Boston, is a city where nearly every story leads back to the docks. Outside of London, there

were more millionaires in Liverpool than in any other British city at the turn of the 19th century. The super

wealthy got rich through the enormous trade that went through the port and that was at the expense of the

workers who were casual labourers not knowing whether they’d earn from one day to the next on a

coastline where the tides were unpredictable. The docks invited immigration, particularly from Ireland, and

this brought a level of conspiratorialism as well as a culture of anti-authoritarianism which in this case

translated into some anti-Britishness.

By the end of the 1970s, Britain was trading more with the European Union. Liverpool was on the wrong

side of the country. Containerisation in other ports was leaving Liverpool behind. Margaret Thatcher came

along and her chancellor proposed a “managed decline” of the city. Unemployment was more than twice

the national rate. Then came Heysel, Hillsborough and the feeling of being let down by a Labour

government the city had voted for. Hicks and Gillett had promised transformation at Anfield and left the

club in the relegation zone and facing administration. For a knockdown fee, FSG inherited all of this

history and it has taken them time to understand it.

Bostonians who have visited Merseyside have noticed how there is more of a sense of community

ownership of the team. The Red Sox have been one of the highest-priced tickets in baseball for so long that fans tend to accept it as a fact of life. Given that the baseball season is long at 162 games a season, 81 at

home means there is enough opportunity for people to go to Fenway Park a couple of times a season if they

want to. At Anfield, the situation is different, where there are just 19 home games in the league. While the

Red Sox have achieved a total attendance of nearly three million for three seasons in a row, Anfield’s total

attendance including cup games during the 2018-19 campaign hovered about the 1.5 million mark.

This explains why figures like Hogan at Liverpool are exploring ways of using Anfield for different events.

In the summer of 2019, Bon Jovi and Pink held concerts there. Liverpool are constantly thinking of new

ways to drive up the revenues that will enable them to compete with the resources of Manchester City and

Manchester United. Of the cross-sport American owners in the Premier League, it is Arsenal’s Stan

Kroenke who is getting the best value for the number of points achieved (£390,000 per point) but that is not

translating onto the pitch as palpable success. So there is a convincing argument that says FSG are getting it right more than the other Americans involved in sport on both sides of the Atlantic, which includes the

Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shahid Khan, whose tenure at Fulham has included two relegations.

In 2011, Henry, Werner and Gordon agreed to rebrand NESV, calling it FSG. It was ultimately a clever

move removing the word “venture” which by definition (a risky or daring journey or undertaking) implied

their purchase of Liverpool was somewhat speculative. Fenway Sports Group reassured Red Sox fans

worried about the group’s focus of where their heart is. They have not since tried to mix up the running of

each institution, treating them as separate businesses. It has always been Henry’s aim at both clubs to

increase their overall value, knowing his profit will be made should he ever choose to sell them.

Considering he bought Liverpool for £300million and the most recent Forbes Rich List has priced the club

at $2.2 billion, it would suggest he has already fulfilled his ambition.

Yet there remain issues for him to resolve on Merseyside, not least the quest for that elusive Premier

League title. Perceptions around FSG’s intentions linger. This summer, it was revealed that the club had

tried to trademark the name ‘Liverpool’. Though officials claimed the move was an attempt to prevent the

rise of counterfeit merchandise and give LFC greater controls on the revenues which feed back into the

team, ambiguity on the application form raised concerns for small businesses and other institutions which

rely on the city’s title for branding as well as identity.

As he looked around the Wanda Metropolitano stadium in Madrid, where Liverpool became European

champions for a sixth time in June, Henry surely would have noticed the masses of red T-shirts from

independent stores. Though Liverpool was the first club in the UK to sell replica shirts nearly 40 years ago,

match-going Liverpudlians have long resisted the sort of mass commercialism that organisations like FSG demand. It is believed that Anfield now has special cameras which allow watchers working on behalf of the

club on match days to estimate fashion trends.

At the Chapel Street offices, there have long been spreadsheets which also detail the expected yield per

seat. Liverpool officials know tourists spend more inside Anfield than season ticket holders, who prefer a

pint in a local pub before a match rather than from a kiosk inside the ground, where the prices are

expensive and the beer isn’t even always cold. Locals remain concerned that Liverpool’s global reach is

coming at the expense of the culture on Merseyside that contributes towards the ‘famous atmosphere’ on

which the club brands itself and ultimately benefits from through increased popularity globally which bring

new revenues.

“Ultimately, I don’t think Liverpool FC, whoever the owners may be, should be allowed or think of itself as

worthy of potentially monopolising an entire city’s identity by trademarking ‘Liverpool’,” said Joe Blott

the chair of the Spirit of Shankly union. “They haven’t tried to trademark Boston so why should they

trademark Liverpool, a city which also includes lots of Everton supporters?”

Liverpool had not discussed their plans with potentially affected parties before and the revelation and

subsequent silence from the club across a 24-hour period meant the void was filled by speculation and

anger. There was some irony that those positioned to offer an explanation were on the club’s pre-season

tour of United States.

“Communication is something FSG must improve on,” Blott stressed.

“Good owners, yes; but can they do better?” Blott asked himself. “Of course they can.”

Brock Holt has his ‘biggest accomplishment’: Red Sox finally honor him with bobblehead

Chad Jennings

The boxes were stacked at every entrance to Fenway Park on Tuesday. Big brown cardboard boxes held

smaller red boxes, and inside each were white Styrofoam molds protecting tiny versions of Brock Holt’s

giant head. One of those cardboard boxes was wheeled into the Red Sox clubhouse, and it had Holt’s wife’s

name, Lakyn, written on the side. That box was clearly going home with the man of the hour.

After 31 years on this earth, more than a decade in professional baseball, six seasons in Boston, and one

particularly big game in last year’s playoffs, Tuesday was finally Brock Holt bobblehead night at Fenway

Park. And Holt was unmistakably pumped about it.

“I’ve been telling everyone that tonight, having a bobblehead, opening the box and seeing it,” Holt said,

“it’s the biggest accomplishment of my career so far.”

He was kidding, of course. Holt has two World Series rings, he’s been selected to an All-Star team, and last

October he became the first player ever to hit for the cycle in the postseason – which was the moment being

commemorated with the bobblehead – but there remained significance to that goofy piece of plastic with its oversized noggin perpetually nodding approval.

The only other Holt-themed giveaway at Fenway Park was July 19, 2016, when fans took home a Pet

Brock. It was literally, a plastic rock with hair, a helmet and Holt’s name and number on the back. It came

in a box with air holes because, you know, it was a pet.

“I was like, is this really what it is?” Holt said. “It’s, like, a rock with a hat on it? They were like, yeah, you

don’t like it? I was like, well, what’s wrong with a bobblehead, you know?”

Stars get bobbleheads. Lovable role players get a play on words. As of Tuesday, Holt had gotten both, and

he was grateful.

A few years ago, his former Double-A team in Altoona held a Brock Holt bobblehead night, but it was

some version of the Greek god Atlas holding the world on his shoulders. In this iteration, Holt was holding

a giant baseball on his back, and it was the ball — not Holt’s head — that actually bobbled. One of them

apparently sold on eBay for $56. Holt’s pretty sure he still has one somewhere, but it’s not exactly on

display in a place of honor.

“It was a swing and miss,” he said.

The Pet Brock wasn’t a full whiff, but it wasn’t a home run, either. Having his own big-league giveaway

was awesome, and Holt could appreciate the novelty of the pun, but he still gives the promotions

department a hard time about the absurdity of the thing.

“Because I think Mookie had like three bobbleheads that year,” Holt said. “And (for me) they came up with

the Pet Brock.”

It was genius, of course — and Holt homered that night, so it might have been good luck — but

bobbleheads are the Rolls-Royce of baseball giveaways, and even those who play it cool about having their

likeness cast into wobbly plastic tend to ask for extras to take home. Some players even put teammates’

bobbleheads in their own lockers. They all want one, even if they joke about the ones that look bad, which

Holt’s does not. As these things go, it’s actually really good.

“I’ve always wanted an actual bobblehead, so tonight’s cool,” Holt said.

It’s also about time. Although he’s not truly a homegrown player, Holt has become a fixture in Boston. He

was acquired at age 24, in a 2012 trade with the Pirates, and made his Red Sox debut on July 6, 2013, four

days before Brandon Workman and six weeks before Xander Bogaerts. Of Holt’s current teammates, only

Jackie Bradley Jr. got to Boston earlier, and even Bradley has less big-league service time.

Holt’s been through two championship seasons, two last-place finishes and three consecutive division titles.

He has one of the most outgoing personalities in the clubhouse and has become an unmistakable fan

favorite. He came into Tuesday’s 6-2 loss to Kansas City batting .312, the second-highest batting average

on the team, and he’d started at six positions this year, displaying the versatility that has been a hallmark of his career.

“I think that’s kind of what has made the fans like me as much as they do,” he said. “I mean, I always play

hard, and all I want to do is play. It doesn’t matter when, where, how. I think that side of my personality

and attitude comes out when I’m on the field.”

It also comes out at the Jimmy Fund Clinic, where Holt has served as Red Sox captain for five years. There

are some at the clinic who say they’ve never seen a local athlete more devoted to those sick kids and their

families. Holt visits so often that nurses and administrators know his wife and young son by name. The

Jimmy Fund has become a part of his local identity. It’s helped him grow meaningful roots in this city. It

further binds him to a place that’s become home, far from where either the Texas-born Brock or Pennsylvania native Lakyn grew up.

“I’ve had to work every step of the way and prove I belong, and I’ve always felt I was a good player and

could help out,” Holt said. “Luckily, the Red Sox have given me an opportunity to play, and I’m thankful

for that.”

But after three years of arbitration, Holt is in his final year of team control. He’ll be a free agent this

offseason, and he has no clue what will happen next. In Marco Hernandez and Tzu-Wei Lin, the Red Sox

have two younger, cheaper left-handed utility options, but neither has the track record of Holt, and neither

has made nearly the same the impact within the clubhouse or the community.

“We’ll see what happens,” Holt said. “I think everybody knows that I love it here and would love to stay.”

Somewhere, his bobblehead was nodding along.

* The New York Times

Senators Call on M.L.B. for More Transparency on Foul Ball Injuries

Billy Witz

Two United States senators raised questions on Tuesday about whether M.L.B. is doing enough to protect

its fans from foul balls, writing a letter to Commissioner Rob Manfred urging him to release data that teams may be collecting on which seats are most vulnerable at their ballparks.

The senators, Richard Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, both Democrats from Illinois, wrote in the letter to

Manfred that making more data about injuries available to the public — and creating an injury registry —

would “help evaluate the voluntary safety measures that many teams are implementing.”

“This will provide a more honest public dialogue and help protect baseball’s biggest (and littlest) fans,” they wrote.

The letter comes amid a spate of injuries that came as a result of foul balls in recent months, the latest

occurring on Sunday when a woman was hospitalized after being hit in the head by a foul ball at a game in

Arlington, Tex., between the Detroit Tigers and the Texas Rangers.

The protective netting in every ballpark was extended to at least the far end of the dugouts before the 2018

season, but the persistent injuries have raised doubts over whether that is enough to protect fans from

serious injuries. The baseballs used by M.L.B. are also smaller and harder than in past seasons and are

being hit into the crowd with greater frequency than 20 years ago.

With M.L.B. collecting proprietary data on launch angles, exit velocities and landing spots, there have been increasing calls by fan-safety advocates for baseball to compile and present the information on dangerous

foul balls to make fans aware of the danger in certain seats. Among that data, Senator Durbin and Senator

Duckworth assert in the letter, is the cataloging of incidents that stadium staff members can sometimes be

seen logging into a mobile device at the scene.

Since recommending that nets be extended to the beginning of dugouts in 2015, Mr. Manfred, who declined

to comment through a spokesman, has consistently refrained from forcing teams to take extra safety

measures, leaving the matter in the hands of individual clubs. He said it would be problematic to mandate

how far and how high additional netting should be extended because each ballpark is designed differently.

Some have begun to act on their own. On Tuesday, the Toronto Blue Jays became the latest team since June to announce that it would extend protective netting by next season, though the team did not say how

far or how high the netting would go.

The Chicago White Sox have extended protective netting from foul pole to foul pole, and the Washington

Nationals extended their netting deep down the foul lines last month. The Kansas City Royals, the Los

Angeles Dodgers and the Pittsburgh Pirates have pledged to extend their netting this season. The Texas

Rangers will do so in their new ballpark next season.

Senator Durbin and Senator Duckworth commended those efforts in their letter, but said more should be

done.

The letter, citing a 2014 Bloomberg News report that estimated foul balls injured nearly 1,800 fans per season, called on M.L.B. to provide more up-to-date information about injuries — and also to create a fan

injury registry — to help evaluate safety measures that teams are taking.

“We need more information to have a fuller picture,” the senators wrote. “We currently rely on media

coverage about foul ball injuries, which can lead to misinformation and confusion.”

Baseball was stirred into taking extensive action when a toddler was badly injured at Yankee Stadium late

in the 2017 season. A handful of clubs had installed netting that reached the end of the dugouts by then, but

before the following season all clubs — including the Yankees — agreed to extend it to the end of the

dugouts.

But some data indicates that some of the most dangerous seats may be just past the dugouts. The website

FiveThirtyEight, in examining a sample of 580 fouls balls in June, found that every line-drive foul ball with

a recorded speed off the bat exceeding 90 miles per hour had landed in an area that was not protected by

netting.

Another toddler, who was sitting with her grandfather in seats down the third-base line at a game in

Houston, was badly injured in May when she was struck by a foul ball hit by the Chicago Cubs outfielder

Albert Almora Jr. during a game against the Astros.

If such seats are indeed more dangerous, the senators wrote, fans should be able to see the data behind it.

“Disclosing that information would help inform fans and their families about the safest locations to sit,”

their letter said. “We appreciate the effort individual teams have taken so far for the safety of fans.

Transparency benefits everyone in making informed decisions and preserves the integrity of the game.”

* The Kansas City Star

Jorge Soler powers Royals to victory as they end losing skid

Lynn Worthy

Just imagine the damage Jorge Soler would do if he played in Fenway Park on a regular basis.

Opposing pitchers’ legs would probably be shaking on the mound, and the green monster might need

monthly maintenance appointments to repair the cluster of dents caused by high-velocity line drives

crashing into it so frequently.

Soler showed just how inadequate the quaint ballpark in Boston is to contain him with a two-homer, 4-RBI

performance that derailed Red Sox starter Andrew Cashner’s night and helped the Royals even up their

series at a game apiece with a 6-2 win in front of an announced 36,360 at Fenway Park on Tuesday night.

“I’m used to swinging the bat hard,” Soler said with quality control/catching coach Pedro Grifol translating.

“Kansas City, obviously, is a big ballpark. So when I get to a park like this, I feel a little more comfortable hitting the ball out of the ballpark because the park is smaller.”

The Royals snapped a 7-game losing streak with the victory. The teams will wrap up their three-game

series with a rubber match on Wednesday night.

The game marked the third multi-homer game of his career, and the 4-RBI matched a career high for a

game. His 31 homers this season are also a career high for the 27-year-old native of Havana, Cuba.

“It means a lot for me, for my family, for the organization,” Soler said of reaching 30 homers. “It’s like the

magic number.”

Soler’s first homer of the night, in the fourth inning, made him the first Royals right-handed hitter to reach

30 home runs since Jermaine Dye in 2000. By the end of the night, he’d moved within seven homers of

tying Mike Moustakas’ single-season club record (38).

A big factor in his success this season has been health. Soler, who entered the day with the fifth-most

homer runs in the American League, has played in 115 games this season. He played in just 96 games

combined the past two seasons with the Royals.

Last season, a broken bone in his foot curtailed his season.

“It’s everything,” Royals manager Ned Yost said of Soler’s production. “Of course it’s approach. Of

course, it’s health. It’s all of the above. He’s learning. He’s growing. He’s understanding what it takes to be a successful power hitter in an American League stocked with power hitters.”

Soler drove in four of the team’s first six runs thanks to a pair of home runs. Meanwhile, first baseman

Ryan O’Hearn snapped out of an 0-for-15 funk with a solo homer, and Whit Merrifield went 2-for-4 with a

run scored. Hunter Dozier also drove in a run.

Royals starting pitcher Jakob Junis turned in a quality start and allowed just one run on seven hits and one walk in six innings. He struck out four on his way to his seventh win of the season.

A well-placed bloop single by Red Sox outfielder Andrew Benintendi with two outs in the third drove in

the game’s first run. Rafael Devers scored from second on the ball that fell in between right fielder Dozier

and second baseman Merrifield.

Soler’s laser over the green monster, a two-run homer, gave the Royals (41-74) a one-run lead in the fourth

inning. In the fifth, O’Hearn added to the lead his first home run in the majors since June 11. The solo shot

ripped over the right-field wall gave the Royals a 3-1 lead.

With Junis nearing 90 pitches for the night, the Royals tacked on three runs in the sixth on blistering RBI

single by Dozier and a two-run homer launched by Soler into left-center field and off the “engie” sign behind the last row of seats. Coincidentally, Engie is a power, natural gas and energy company.

Royals left-handed reliever Richard Lovelady allowed one run in two innings of relief, and closer Ian

Kennedy, who hadn’t pitched since July 31, pitched a perfect ninth inning.

“You want to be the one who goes out there and throws a good game and kind of keeps them off the

scoreboard, gives your team a chance to win and break that streak,” Junis said of snapping the losing streak.

“I think tonight was a good night for that. We hadn’t been playing very well lately. Offense and pitching

staff hadn’t really been on the same page. Tonight, offense was great and pitching all the way up and down

was good too.”

Right-hander Glenn Sparkman (3-7, 5.58) will start Wednesday for the Royals, while left-hander Eduardo

Rodriguez (13-5, 4.19) is the scheduled starter for the Red Sox.

* Associated Press

Soler hits 2 long HRs, Royals beat Red Sox 6-2 to snap skid

Jorge Soler hit a pair of long two-run homers over the Green Monster, Jakob Junis pitched six effective

innings and the Kansas City Royals snapped their seven-game losing streak by beating the Boston Red Sox

6-2 Tuesday night.

Ryan O'Hearn also homered for Kansas City, which had lost eight in a row to the Red Sox -- its longest

slump ever against Boston.

Christian Vazquez had two hits with an RBI double for Boston, which halted its eight-game losing skid a

night earlier.

The Red Sox also were held without a home run, ending a club-record stretch of at least one homer in 18

straight games in Fenway Park.

Junis (7-10) escaped a couple of early jams and gave up one run on seven hits, striking out four with one

walk. He went at least six innings for the 12th time in his last 15 starts.

Andrew Cashner (10-7) gave up six runs on seven hits -- three of them homers -- over 5 1/3 innings,

dropping his record to 1-4 since being traded from Baltimore to the Red Sox.

A night after the Red Sox got a solid start from Rick Porcello to snap their longest losing stretch since

dropping eight straight in 2015, Cashner was chased with Boston trailing 6-1 in the sixth.

Soler's first homer -- his 30th of the season -- left Fenway completely, making it 2-1 in the fourth.

Two innings later, he hit a drive that caromed off a billboard in left center to make it 6-1 after Hunter

Dozier's RBI single.

O'Hearn's drive went into the seats in deep right, next to the Royals bullpen.

The Red Sox stranded seven runners over the first four innings.

Kansas City center fielder Bubba Starling struck out swinging in all four at-bats but made a nice catch to

save at least one run.

CASHING OUT

Cashner has given up at least six runs in three of his five starts after he was acquired from the Orioles in

mid-July. He's allowed seven homers in 28 innings and has a 7.53 ERA with the Red Sox.

During the eight-game losing skid, Boston's starters had a 10.95 ERA.

RUNS SAVER

Starling made a leaping catch on Vazquez's fly ball at the wall to end the third inning and likely saved two

runs.

Boston had already taken a 1-0 lead on Andrew Benintendi's RBI single and had runners on first and third when Starling drifted back to the wall before jumping to make the grab.

HOW ABOUT THAT

Red Sox 2B Michael Chavis made a nice over-the -shoulder catch in shallow center off Dozier before

tumbling to the ground.

TRAINER'S ROOM

Red Sox: Manager Alex Cora said knuckleballer Steven Wright is traveling to Florida to see Dr. James

Andrews on Wednesday to get a second opinion on his pitching elbow. . Cora also said that RHP Heath

Hembree received a platelet-rich plasma injection near his right elbow. SS Xander Bogaerts got the day off.

UP NEXT

Royals: RHP Glenn Sparkman (3-7, 5.58 ERA) is scheduled to pitch the series finale Wednesday. He's 0-4

with a 10.16 ERA in seven road starts this season.

Red Sox: LHP Eduardo Rodriguez (13-5, 4.19) is slated to go for Boston. The Red Sox are 17-3 in his last

20 starts.