A couple ways to look at it, depends on if one wants to be excited or fearful, I guess.
I'd say "promising" in regards to Imanaga but I don't think it means anything for YY. Imanaga to me belongs in that Sonny Gray, Stroman, grouping of guys that are pretty reasonable bets to be a #3 and would look really good in a rotation of SP, Bello, "Imanaga", SP4, Crawford, 12 starts from Sale.
If that is the highest caliber of SP acquired, then the Sox kind of need 3 versions of Imanaga if they want to be contenders for all 3 wild cards (ie something like Bello, Stroman, Imanaga, Lugo, Crawford). Even then I think you're missing the playoffs as I would vastly prefer Gausman, Berrios, Bassitt, Kikuchi and hoping to fix Manoah over Bello, Stroman, Imanaga, Lugo, Crawford and hoping to keep Sale healthy) but it's a heck of a lot better than we've had in 2022 or 2023, so it'd be an improvment.
It could also be seen as "discouraging" if they've offered Imanaga 4/$80m (exactly what Rodriguez got) and he hasn't taken it.
At this point, I think it's just "realistic":
ERod isn't someone you'd break the bank on and even when you had 4 of him in 2015 (Miley, Porcello, ERod, Buchholz along with two "prospects" in Joe Kelly and Henry Owens) AND a top 4 offense AND a dominant closer (Koji) and the team still sucked.
So there is no real reason to spend on him this early and trying desperately to acquire makes sense.