Dynomite?

Dynasty? Sorry, no.

We might as well consider the 1997/2003 Florida Marlins a dynasty if we’re going to rush to assign that tag to these Red Sox, winners of two of the last four World Series titles. The Patriots had to win three out of four to be considered the NFL’s latest dynasty. How do the Sox get off so easy by winning a pair three years apart?

”Whenever teams win championships and the champagne starts to flow, somebody inevitably makes some stupid proclamation. I promised myself I wouldn’t be that guy,” Theo Epstein said in addressing the issue. ”All I’ll say is I’m proud of being a part of this organization and what we’ve accomplished and I hope we can continue doing great things.”

There you have it. To attach such a proclamation to this team is foolhardy. Dynasty? No.

Not yet.

Perhaps this is the biggest difference between this version of World Series champs and the 2004 curse-busters. While that team boasted a number of players headed to free agency (Pedro Martinez, Derek Lowe) and others soon on the way out (Johnny Damon, Kevin Millar, Bill Mueller, Keith Foulke), the 2007 version is chock full of chips for the future. Jacoby Ellsbury, Manny Delcarmen, Kevin Youkilis, Jon Lester, Jonathan Papelbon, and Dustin Pedroia force us to recall how the last dynasty in baseball, the Yankees, managed to keep its dominance — on the backbone of homegrown talent that included Mariano Rivera, Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada, and that Jeter fellow. Each of the aforementioned Red Sox farm products contributed in some way or form this time around. In 2004, only Trot Nixon and Youkilis could say they’d been in the system since the start.
The 2004 team was a peaking team in its prime. The 2007 team is really just getting started.
Delcarmen, Youkilis, Papelbon, Ellsbury, Lester, and Pedroia, none above 28 years old, the latter trio still each at the ripe age of 23. At 27, Josh Beckett has already established himself as one of the most dominant postseason pitchers EVER. Twenty-two-year-old Clay Buchholz has already given us a glimpse of what he can deliver, and plenty of people point to Beckett’s second year as a possible sign of things to come for a more seasoned Daisuke Matsuzaka (26) in 2008.
A dynasty they are not. But no other team in baseball is as primed as they are to become one.
“Remember when they’d settle for one, the now-I-can-die-in-peace era?” asks Yahoo’s Tim Brown. “Turns out, you’ve lived long enough to witness the Red Sox as persistent winners, as budding dynasty, and just as the Yankees have fallen into a period of uncomfortable transition.”
Folks like ESPN’s Gene Wojciechowski call them the “indisputable rulers of the baseball universe as we know it” and “the Roman Empire of the postseason.” AOL Sports’ Larry Brown refers to them as “the defining team in baseball.” The Chicago Sun Time’s Jay Mariotti tabs them “America’s new dream team.” The Providence Journal’s Sean McAdam calls it simply, the “Golden Age of Red Sox baseball.” All that may be true. But they are not a dynasty.
Writes USA Today’s Hal Bodley:

The Red Sox spend money almost freely, like the $103.1 million they shelled out for Daisuke Matsuzaka. Their payroll of $143 million is second only to the Yankees, but under the direction of young, astute general manager Theo Epstein, they’re developing from within. Dustin Pedroia and Jacoby Ellsbury, who was on fire in the Series batting .438, are both 24. Josh Beckett (4-0 in the postseason) and Matsuzaka are both 27.
And Jonathan Papelbon, who was magnificent and invincible in the Series is just 26. Papelbon, who fanned Smith for the final out, recorded three saves in the four games and didn’t allow a run in 4⅓ innings.
Sounds like a dynasty in the making to me.

In the making, sure. One more might do it. Two more would seal it.
“A dynasty in Boston? Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves here,” writes the Washington Times’ Mark Zuckerman. “But make no mistake, the Red Sox have become the envy of the baseball world: a model franchise that has found a way to combine a century’s worth of history, millions of dollars in revenue, one of the sport’s best player development systems and on-field prowess into a blueprint for success.”
There’s no denying that it certainly helps to have the second-highest payroll in the game, a tremendous reason why the Red Sox today are World Champions. But if they win more, in ’08, ’09, or into the next decade, that payroll will in large part be dedicated to keeping home-grown talent in the mix. In a game dominated by free agency, growing your own talent is the only way to hope for a dynasty. Or just ask the Yankees how many titles they’ve won since piling up on high-priced free agents.
In 2004, David Ortiz, Gabe Kapler, Orlando Cabrera, Mark Bellhorn, and Bronson Arroyo were the only postseason contributors under the age of 30. Today, only Ortiz remains, and at the elder statesman age of 31, he’s now joined on a roster that is bursting with young talent, a championship the culmination of their season-long preview to the baseball world. You could have made a case for Pedroia or Ellsbury for Series MVP, really, which speaks volumes about the kind of transition they’ve made to the major leagues.
There will probably be more in the coming years if what we’ve seen from this young crop continues into the coming seasons. A dynasty in Foxborough, and now potentially one in the Fens. Such double duty is so unprecedented it’s difficult to convey what it all means.
It’s coming, with perhaps only injury poised to knock it off its path.
That or signing Alex Rodriguez.