If the Red Sox braintrust want to pinch pennies, then why should I follow them as a fan and put money in their pocket on ticket sales, t-shirt sales, etc?
Because they've brought the city three titles in ten years?
In 2004 and 2007, the Sox had one of the highest payrolls in baseball. Both of those rosters were filled with high profile players on high profile contracts. They did business similar to the way the Yankees did business, and it worked!
As for 2013, to me, that was an anomoly. It was just the perfect storm of players staying healthy and having career years.
Every now and then, a team just gets all the right breaks. I wouldn't call it luck, but certainly luck plays a role. To think what happened in 2013 will just happen again is EXTREMELY unlikely.
To make a long story short....2 of the 3 titles were won with a combination of lucrative contracts and yes, contributions from the farm system (really no different than the Yankees.)
To me, that's how a team should be run.
This new "moneyball" or "short term" method (whatever you want to call it) does not usually work
Is the "Yankees' Way" working? One title in the past 13 seasons. The Sox have committed plenty of big money, as well, including high-profile signings of John Lackey, Carl Crawford, Dice-K, etc. In general, they haven't received a huge return on investment.
Also, as Fafnir noted, the Sox have consistently been in the top-4 in payroll for the past decade. Plus, I'm not sure things have changed that much since 2004:
2004 Sox payroll: $125.2 million
2004 Yankees payroll: $182.8 million
2004 payroll gap: $57.6 million
2007 Sox payroll: $143.0 million
2007 Yankees payroll: $189.6 million
2007 payroll gap: $46.6 million
2014 Sox payroll: $162.8 million
2014 Yankees payroll: $203.8 million
2014 payroll gap: $41 million
So, compared to our two prior championship teams, the gap between the Red Sox payroll and the Yankees payroll has actually shrunk.
Also, to say "ownership won 3 titles in 10 years" is a bit inaccurate.
Maybe they were the partial architects of those title teams (remember alot of players from the 2004 team were players from the Duquette regime) but the players won those titles, not the owners.
I have noticed many are quick to give credit to one certain party or person as opposed to the whole team.
Well, you're claiming that there's no reason to support ownership, because they haven't invested in the team sufficiently. A solid counter-argument to that seems to be that the team has, in fact, been winning, even moreso than teams that have spent more.
This ownership group has made a strong financial commitment to the team, and has hired smart personnel for the front office. Of course it's the players winning games on the field, but the organization top-to-bottom has put the team in a position to succeed.