The Oakland Athletics popularized sabermetrics and analytics in baseball, but it was the Red Sox that welded stats to money and launched the most successful era in club history in nearly a century with four championships in a 15-year period.
The last five seasons have been much more ordinary for the Sox. They’ve reached the playoffs just once since winning it all in 2018, with two losing seasons in the mix. They had a solid core, but opted to trade away Mookie Betts and Andrew Benintendi, and let shortstop Xander Bogaerts walk via free agency in order to preserve payroll flexibility.