You have not shown your work with regards to free agent pitchers avoiding the Red Sox. What you need to show are examples of free agent pitchers pursued by the Red Sox that ended up signing elsewhere. The only ones I can think of off the top of my head were Mike Mussina (pre-2002, and he stayed in the AL East), maybe CC Sabathia (the Sox were rumored to be in on him until he got an outrageous contract offer to come to the AL East). And Jon Lester, but there was some very relevant history that had a lot to do with his decision. If you can name others, then we can have a debate on this topic.Tiresome request! I already posted upthread that the Sox have signed six FA SPs to multi-year contracts since 2002 (Price, Lackey, Dice-K, Burkett, Clement, and Dempster—seven if you wanna count Wakefield). The pitchers they've acquired by trade in that time include Beckett, Sale, Kim, Schilling, Rubby (sorta), Peavy, Miley, Porcello, Rodriguez, Wright, Pomeranz, and Kelly (and Pedro and Lowe, who were already on the team in 2002). Maybe there's a more thorough analysis to be done here about how the Sox acquire players, but it's reasonable to think that pitchers worry that signing with a team that plays in a hitters park in the AL East would hurt their numbers. (Recall that Schilling expressed exactly this to Theo.) That's why I think the Sox tend to get pitchers via trade.
Both Price and Lackey were some of the more higher profile free agent pitchers to sign, period. And they came to Boston.
It's also worth noting opportunity. The Sox haven't had much reason to go after that many free agent starters.
Finally, taking anything Curt Schilling says at face value seriously devalues your argument, no matter the topic.