A new baseball season is always uncharted territory.

Regardless of previous success or failure, regardless of one’s offseason acquisitions or lack thereof, there’s no guarantee in how a team’s season will end until it’s over.

So it’s interesting that, in addition to embarking on a new season full of the usual unknowns, the Red Sox have also decided to venture into a different form of uncharted territory, making themselves the subject of a season-long docuseries with Netflix.

Netflix is also making a second Red Sox series, about the 2004 season, but everyone already knows how that one ends. It will, however, be interesting to see if they can put a new spin on an historic year that has already been chronicled several times.

“It’s sort of, these two parallel processes came about,” Red Sox chief marketing officer Adam Grossman told the Herald this week. “I think Netflix felt like it was a good sort of one-two punch … it’s incredible that both baseball and the Red Sox, and our players will be on this platform to a truly global audience for the history and the current.”

It’s a project approximately three years in the making. Members of Red Sox leadership were involved early on, but it began as a more abstract discussion about how best to package Major League Baseball for television.

“The entry point was between Netflix and MLB,” Grossman said. “The commissioner, and John (Henry), and Netflix had talked – and Tom (Werner) – had started having discussions around the importance of baseball being on a platform like Netflix, with some of the docuseries that had been going on.”

Netflix has seen immense success with their docuseries “Formula 1: Drive to Survive,” which is entering its sixth season. MLB, with 30 teams, could do a season apiece and run until 2055. But in initial discussions with Netflix, there were several potential angles, including a multi-team project, or focusing on specific players.

Ultimately, Grossman said they decided, “The best way to do this, to really demonstrate the experience and the texture of what a baseball season is, should be to focus on a team.” He conceded that Netflix may have spoken with other teams, but the Red Sox were the club that expressed a strong interest in moving forward. “We, as we got more information, really raised our hands to try to, you know, say, we’d love to be the first,” he said.

“It’s gonna be about baseball, obviously, but not exclusively about baseball,” Grossman said. “There’s a lot of human interest, a lot of opportunity, the struggle and the grind, the triumph.”

The F1 model doesn’t exactly translate to a team sport with a 162-game season, so there will also be elements of “The Last Dance,” as well. Netflix’s 10-episode co-venture with ESPN chronicling Michael Jordan and the 1998 Chicago Bulls became an overnight sensation when it premiered in the spring of 2020, and holds a 97% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Of course, the Bulls of the 90s were a dynasty. With Jordan leading the way, they completed not one, but two three-peats to win six rings between ‘91 and ‘98, and really made the NBA a global phenomenon. The access granted to the film crew was unprecedented, and it’s stunning to watch hours of intimate, behind-the-scenes footage – most of it never seen before – of a team making the most out of their final season together, striving for one last moment of glory.

The Red Sox won four championships between ‘04 and ‘18, more than any other MLB franchise this century, then decided it was time for a massive rebuild. Since trading generational talent Mookie Betts to the Los Angeles Dodgers in February 2020, Boston has finished last three times in four years, and eschewed extravagant spending almost entirely.

“The importance of growing the game, and growing baseball to a new, and different, and global audience” is something Grossman says every level of the organization understands, from ownership, to the players. “Even for … core followers, we think this will be appealing. But also, there may be somebody in the Philippines that has only sort of heard of baseball, that can also access this, and so it’s sort of a new introduction, whether you are at the very early stages of fandom, or a diehard, that there may be something there for everybody.”

“So that, from an appeal standpoint for us, was really, really intriguing,” said Grossman. “Having the history, the tradition, the fan passion that the Red Sox do have, that Fenway Park is sort of a landmark, and its own cathedral, I think does play into that as well.”

“And, that we are willing to do these things,” he added.

However, it’s worth wondering why the Red Sox are willing to do this now. The team is coming off back-to-back last-place finishes, with little indication that this year’s roster will fare better. They had their worst home attendance under current ownership in ‘22, and barely exceeded it the following season.

Their approval rating among fans is sinking to new lows each day, in part because there’s little star power on the roster and the front office hasn’t done enough to fix that. Rafael Devers is the highest-paid player in franchise history, but David Ortiz accurately describes the third baseman as “shy.” And Henry hasn’t made himself available to the media since the Betts trade. Will he do so for Netflix?

Barring a miraculous worst-to-first scenario – something the Red Sox have pulled off in the past – Netflix’s editing department will have its work cut out for themselves, trying to paint them in a flattering light.