Ticket Plans Are on Sale. Here Comes the Elly Carrot.

The Red Sox would like your commitment to next season. Preferably with a credit card.

Their commitment to Elly De La Cruz? That remains somewhere between reported interest and a very large “if.” Your payment, unfortunately, comes with fewer qualifiers.

Welcome to November in Boston, where you can build a championship lineup in your imagination before the front office has to put anybody in an actual uniform.

Let’s get the ticket detail straight: Boston is offering 2027 season-ticket plans; single-game sale information is still pending. We have not verified a mid-November sale deadline. There is no need to invent one. The contrast is already sitting there: fans can commit their money while the baseball improvements remain hypothetical.

Now comes Elly. Electrifying player. Wonderful daydream. Potentially the finest carrot you could hang in front of a fan base that wants a reason to believe.

Boston.com’s Conor Ryan reported November 3 that Jim Bowden expects Boston to keep pursuing De La Cruz if Cincinnati decides to move him. Ryan also cited Sean McAdam’s earlier reporting that Boston made a substantial deadline offer but failed to reach an agreement.

That is meaningful interest. It is not a completed trade, an agreement on the price, or confirmation that Cincinnati has decided to sell.

Those distinctions tend to disappear somewhere between the original report and the seventh social-media graphic of Elly wearing a Red Sox jersey.

By then, the Photoshop department has won the offseason. Baseball operations hasn’t made a transaction.

My read? I’m not counting on this team landing him. That’s skepticism, not inside information. I would be delighted to be wrong. Put him at the introductory press conference and I’ll happily eat the column. Bring mustard.

The appeal is obvious. NBC Sports Boston lists De La Cruz’s 2026 season at 30 home runs,…