After the Boston Red Sox traded their disaffected slugger Rafael Devers to the San Francisco Giants earlier this month, Devers told The Boston Globe, “I was surprised when it happened, but I knew it was coming. I know the business of baseball.”

Baseball is indisputably a business, although we fans may prefer to think of it as a sport and a national pastime. And you don’t have to be a graduate of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth to recognize that management failures, compounded by Devers’ immaturity, resulted in a bitter divorce.

Lesson One has been well documented — the failure of Red Sox executives to communicate to Devers their intention to sign free agent Alex Bregman this past winter. Bregman, an accomplished hitter in his own right, is a stellar defensive third baseman, a position that Devers had played but indifferently throughout his career even as he excelled at bat. Devers did not take kindly to the team’s sudden request that he move to designated hitter, which he might have done if management had communicated with him beforehand that signing Bregman was a commitment to improving the team, something Devers had previously asked them to do.

Ultimately, he acquiesced to the position switch with the understanding that he would not play in the field this season and performed well as the designated hitter. But when first baseman Triston Casas suffered a season-ending injury, management asked Devers to pick up a glove and learn the position on the fly. This he adamantly declined to do, even rebuffing Sox owner John Henry, who flew to Kansas City to make the plea directly. This lack of team-first spirit sealed the deal with the Giants a few weeks later.

Once he was gone, Red Sox executives hinted that Devers had become a negative influence on a corps of promising youngsters around whom the team hopes to build a winner. For his part, Devers believed that the team had reneged on a stated commitment made before the 2023 season, when he signed an 10-year, $313 million megadeal, that he was the current and future third baseman.

This failure to communicate, although the immediate cause of Devers’ exile to the city by the bay, is only the culmination of a series of disastrous management decisions stretching back five years, ones that any savvy enterprise should recognize and go to great lengths to avoid.

In 2020, the Red Sox traded Mookie Betts, the cornerstone of the team’s last championship in 2018, to the Los Angeles Dodgers in return for what at this juncture is a backup catcher. Betts was soon to be a free agent, and management convinced itself that it would be unable to reach a long-term deal with him. The upshot was that they grossly miscalculated the market for a supremely talented player, who soon signed a 12-year, $365 million contract with the Dodgers and who has been instrumental in helping them win two World Series titles. This grievous self-inflicted wound has manifested itself in just one playoff appearance for the Red Sox and three last-place finishes since then, while Betts seems to be on the way to the Hall of Fame.

Failing to heed that lesson, Sox executives soon allowed shortstop Xander Bogaerts, another talented player of sterling character, to slip away as a free agent to the San Diego Padres instead of signing him to a long-term contract when they had the chance. This was another misreading of the market and their fan base.

The resulting blowback from fans and the media was fierce. At that point, management went overboard in the opposite direction, signing Devers to an immense long-term contract with the expectation that he would become the public face of the franchise, a role for which his personality was ill-suited. Devers is unquestionably one of the top 10 or 15 hitters in the game, but his lackluster defense always strongly suggested that his future was as a designated hitter. His conditioning was also suspect, and many observers concluded that the contract would not age well. So when the Giants, intent on winning now, took the gamble and agreed to take on the $255 million remainder of Devers’ contract, the deal was done.

These serial miscalculations have the same root. Despite its untold riches and despite charging the highest prices in MLB, Red Sox ownership has tried to win on the cheap, opting for what it characterizes as payroll flexibility. Also worth noting is that Fenway Sports Group, in the years after acquiring the Sox, has diversified its portfolio of holdings to include the Pittsburgh Penguins of the National Hockey League, the Liverpool F.C. soccer club, an auto racing team and much more. It is not the first enterprise that has lost sight of its core business.