MLB teams
Gordon Edes, ESPN Staff Writer 9y

Red Sox rebuilt and ready to contend?

MLB, Boston Red Sox

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Ben Cherington was in his suite at the Grand Hyatt in San Diego when the phone calls came in rapid succession. The first was from agent Seth Levinson, informing the Red Sox general manager that pitcher Jon Lester would not be returning to the Red Sox. The second was from Lester, delivering the message himself. A professional relationship that went back a dozen years -- Cherington was in player development when Lester signed with the Sox in 2002 -- was over for good.

Oh, and the Red Sox were not getting their ace back.

Seventy-two hours later, the Red Sox had a reconstructed starting rotation, signing free agent Justin Masterson and acquiring Rick Porcello and Wade Miley in trades. Combined with the signings of the two biggest bats on the free-agent market, Pablo Sandoval and Hanley Ramirez, the Red Sox bore little resemblance to the team that finished in last place in 2014. They didn't look much like the team that won the World Series in 2013, either.

It felt like it happened in about the time it took Cherington to hang up with Lester, and that the pitcher's departure was the catalyst for everything that transpired. That's not at all the way it went down, as Cherington explained here one morning, describing the process by which the 2015 Red Sox, who open the season Monday against the Phillies in Philadelphia, were assembled. The end product? That remains to be seen, though Cherington, who by nature is understated, is quietly confident when asked to assess his team's chances.

"I like it,'' he said here Thursday. "I think the division is going to be tough. I think the league is going to be tough. I can't remember a year where to start the season there are so few teams you really didn't think had a chance. Look at all three divisions in the league, you can see if things come together [most teams] have a chance to contend, and I don't remember a year like that.

"On the other hand, I'm not sure there are teams that are going to run away with it, either. I think it's going to be very competitive, but I like our chances. I think we've got talent. I think we've got some depth. I think we're not perfect. I don't think any team is. I think it will come down to execution and focus and a little luck and making good adjustments in season and those good teams will end up on top. I think we have as good a chance to be one of those teams as anyone else, but it will be a battle.''

Here, then, is how Cherington prepared the Sox for that battle.

The target

The reconstruction of the Sox began with a simple premise: Their offense was a disaster in 2014. They went from scoring 5.27 runs a game in 2013 to 3.91 last season. They hit 55 fewer home runs, 81 fewer doubles, stole 60 fewer bases, walked 46 fewer times, and saw their OPS drop 111 percentage points. The only numbers that went up? They struck out more, and hit into more double plays.

The outfield had been a minefield for much of the season, but the emergence of Mookie Betts and the acquisitions of Cubans Yoenis Cespedes and Rusney Castillo had them trending in the right direction.

The black hole was third base, where Will Middlebrooks was either hurt or ineffective or both, leading to the re-signing of Stephen Drew so that Xander Bogaerts could move to third, which had the effect of having him stop hitting, too. In their organizational meetings after the season, the Sox quickly identified their No. 1 target of the winter: free-agent third baseman Pablo Sandoval. The Sox had scouted Sandoval heavily all summer, had commissioned scouts to learn all they could about him. Allard Baird, Cherington's right-hand man, had a connection with Sandoval's agent, Gustavo Vazquez, because they were both from Miami.

"He was a target from the beginning of the offseason, pretty straightforward, the filling of what we perceived as a need,'' Cherington said.

And while reports circulated at the GM meetings in Phoenix that Sandoval was going back to the Giants, a Sox source made it clear the team was "all-in" on the Kung Fu Panda. By Nov. 25, he had officially signed a five-year, $95 million deal with the club.

The opportunity

The Sox, of course, were aware that Hanley Ramirez was available as a free agent, but it wasn't until Ramirez's agent, Adam Katz, told Cherington at the GM meetings that Ramirez would play anywhere on the diamond -- "He'll even catch,'' Katz joked -- that the Sox entertained the possibility of signing him, and making him an outfielder. There was a wing of the baseball ops department that had always rued the day Ramirez was dealt to the Miami Marlins in 2006, even though a year later, the Sox had another World Series title with significant contributions from Josh Beckett and Mike Lowell, the players they'd acquired in the Ramirez deal. And there had long been idle talk in the Yawkey Way offices about how great it would be if Ramirez one day came back.

When Katz invited Cherington to take a serious look at his client, Cherington couldn't resist.

"We saw signing Hanley as an opportunity,'' Cherington said. "We didn't know what the aftermath would be. When we made the decision to sign Hanley, we made the decision not knowing what would follow, but we knew it probably increased the likelihood we would move an outfielder at some point.'' On Nov. 25, the same day the Sandoval deal was announced, the Sox announced Ramirez, too.

The arms race

While the Sox fostered the hope that Lester would return even after negotiations the previous spring had broken down and were never rekindled before the pitcher was traded in July to Oakland, they aggressively plotted the rebuilding of a pitching staff that had been gutted by the trades of Lester, John Lackey and Jake Peavy.

"We knew we were going to add to the rotation at least two guys, if not three,'' Cherington said. "We knew that would not be an easy thing to do in one offseason, so we cast a very wide net, explored every conceivable free agent and trade option.''

While it looked like the Sox struck only after Lester was gone, they already had set the trades for Miley and Porcello and the signing of free agent Masterson in motion even before they got to San Diego for the winter meetings.

Manager John Farrell and VP Mike Hazen met with Masterson in Indiana on their way to San Diego. "That got the ball rolling,'' Cherington said. The Sox and Diamondbacks had been in talks regarding Miley since the GM meetings in November; it wasn't until San Diego they finally agreed on the players going back to Arizona. The talks with Detroit took on more clarity once the Tigers had made another deal, acquiring pitcher Alfredo Simon, making Detroit GM Dave Dombrowski more amenable to talking about Porcello, who was a year away from free agency. The Sox already had been informed by the Tigers they had interest in Cespedes.

"That one probably happened quickest,'' Cherington said. "Once they got the Simon trade lined up, they could address the need for an outfielder. Detroit did what they had to do in order to do the Cespedes deal.''

The prognosis

The two most tiresome questions asked in New England sports conversations this winter were "Did the Pats deflate the footballs?" and "Do the Sox have an ace?" Cherington isn't going to insult the intelligence of the Red Sox fan and suggest that in Clay Buchholz, Porcello, Miley, Masterson and Joe Kelly, who came in July's Lackey deal from St. Louis, the Sox have a pitcher yet on the level of the top-of-the-rotation pitchers who have been a hallmark of recent Sox teams: Lester and Josh Beckett and Curt Schilling and Pedro Martinez and, going back far enough, Roger Clemens. (Though, truth be told, no one was calling Lester an ace in 2012 or much of 2013, and Beckett had an erratic run at the top).

"We know we have to have good pitching to win,'' Cherington said. "We feel good about the combination, the group of pitching we have. I think pitching staffs can be good in different ways. Obviously, we've had years with elite, top-level performance from two or three guys who maybe carried a pitching staff. You can have years the whole group kind of carries water. I think that's what we need, and I think we have a chance to get that based on what we've seen this spring.''

"Obviously, Kelly had a setback [biceps tendinitis] and is still building, but what we've seen from the other four guys penciled into the rotation has been mostly positive.''

The Sox have not talked in recent days with the Phillies about Cole Hamels, the left-hander they are expected to face in their opener April 6. Every proposal the Phillies ran by the Sox included either catcher Blake Swihart or Betts, and neither of those players are going anywhere. And the Sox aren't eager to part with any of the left-handers lined up to be the next generation of Sox starters -- Eduardo Rodriguez and Henry Owens and Brian Johnson, the latter being the most advanced, though perhaps not possessing the same quality of stuff as Rodriguez and Owens.

The Sox will score. Mike Napoli, surgery having corrected his sleep apnea, has had a monster spring, culminating this week in a broken-bat home run onto the top of the Monster at JetBlue Park, and then a blast over the boardwalk in Hammond Stadium, and the Caloosahatchee River. The only player to have a better spring than Betts was Kris Bryant of the Cubs, and with Bryant going back to the minors for the Cubs, Betts wins that one, too. Sandoval and Ramirez have happily embraced the "Three Amigos" persona with Ortiz that the club is clearly selling, too. Dustin Pedroia's thumb and wrist are healed, and he has scores to settle. The Sox are so deep in outfielders that the $72.5 million Cuban, Castillo, is starting the season in Triple-A.

The closer, Koji Uehara, is 40 and slowed this spring by a hamstring, so that's one obvious red flag. Ortiz is 39, and Ramirez and Shane Victorino have both had health challenges. A National League executive said this spring that when healthy, Ramirez was the best hitter the Dodgers had last season and one of the best five hitters in the game. Cherington said he sees a more comfortable Xander Bogaerts at short.

A team coming together?

"So far so good,'' Cherington said. "We'll know more as we go into the season with a smaller group and go through the inevitable ups and downs of a season. Every team has adversity at some point, and that's when you find out about your group. But so far, so good. We're hearing the right things. Guys are here for the right reason, we believe. We knew there was going to be a lot of getting to know each other this spring, and it will extend into the season. What we needed to happen in spring training mostly happened. Now it just has to continue.''

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