Poll: Does Chaim Bloom deserve an apology from Red Sox Nation?

We are now three months and a new year into the Red Sox off-season. So far, the promise of a "full throttle" approach has yielded some spare parts and an overpriced starting pitcher who finished last season 2-9 with an ERA north of seven in his final dozen starts of the season.

Oh, and Boston also traded away Chris Sale to Atlanta, leaving Rafael Devers as the lone remaining member of Boston's last World Series title. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to be the guy who endlessly complained about Sale's production to only then be upset when they now finally sent him packing. I'm just a little sour that the sister's of the poor who cry that it's too expensive to run an MLB team and can't spend money on their own payroll due to these constraints are cool with shelling out $17mil to Atlanta to cover part of Sale's $27.5 million salary.

It's been an odyssey of penny pinching in recent off-seasons for the Red Sox, who Pete Abraham of The Boston Globe described as having "philosophically become a second-tier team that no longer pursues top talent."

Chris Cotillo of MassLive.com said "according to a baseball source, the Red Sox have told at least one free agent target that they need to shed more payroll before pursuing him as aggressively as they want to," while Cotillo also noted multiple executives have asked him why the Sox are operating like a small market club this winter.

It appears to now be the reality for this team, which is still the 3rd-most valuable franchise in the sport and printing profits. While ticket prices continue to rise year over year, ownership is not concerned with treating fans to a winning product on the field, rather continuing to line their pockets through the vast and growing ventures of Fenway Sports Group.

Who has time to care about a baseball team when you can make millions off real estate around Fenway, dump millions into the PGA to revitalize golf, buy an NHL franchise or hoard close to a billion dollars for your soccer team to acquire French striker Kylian Mbappe? These are all things FSG seems more focused on than bringing the Sox back to glory.

For the last four years, we spent much of the decline blaming Chaim Bloom for bringing his Tampa Bay model north to Boston. It's now evident this is an issue that isn't going away under the new regime, despite ownership's best attempts at making Bloom the scapegoat.