ehaz said:
This keeps getting repeated but why the hell would they pay $200 million to David Price/Jordan Zimmermann/Johnny Cueto if they wouldn't pony up a few million a year to keep a guy they drafted and developed? It's not like this better FA class is going to be paid less. At some point, if you want to add legit SP from free agency, you have to spend big bucks. Just like you do when you need to add a young, valuable position player.
This is where I am. Even if one of those players makes it to free agency, the bidding starts at 7/$170, and the Red Sox pretty much through their words and actions over the past year have made it clear they're not going anywhere near that level absent a generational talent showing up while still in their mid-20s. None of those guys qualify.
My main disappointment remains that they never made a real effort to sign him last winter or at the all-star break this season before dumping him for a player they no longer have any use for, and whose trade value is at this moment significantly less than the value Jon Lester had at the trade deadline. But acknowledging all that as a sunk cost, the Cubs overpaid, so it's hard to fault them for the decision they made last night in a vacuum.
Another real disappointment is in recognizing that they just weren't really all that competitive for Lester. The Cubs outbid them by $20 million plus an option year; the Giants outbid them by a guaranteed year and $43 million; who knows what the Dodgers bid, but I bet significantly more than 6-$135. So, you've got 3 of the best front offices in the game today who all were significantly more optimistic in their assessment of Lester than the Red Sox and in the process have just redefined what it was going to take to sign a top free agent pitcher. Does that mean the Red Sox see Lester as a significantly lesser pitcher than 2-time World Series champion GM Epstein, 3-time World Series Champion GM Brian Sabean, and supposed Wonderboy Andrew Friedman? O.k., they know him best, that's a reasonable interpretation. Or does that mean the Red Sox perception of what the market should be is seriously out of whack with what the market is? That's less o.k.
If it is the latter, then the only way this team is ever going to have an ace pitcher again is to develop one, or spend a king's ransom of developed prospects for one as well as a king's ransom in just money (a Pedro deal). But, under the current SABR paradigm, using ex-ante knowledge only, was the Pedro deal a good one? I don't think you can say it was a no-brainer, that's for sure. It's not much different from trading Owens and Ball for Hamels, and the SABR crowd here has made it clear that such a deal would be an overpay in their mind.
So, the way forward? I'd say the difference between what Liriano signed for and what Lester signed for suggests the new market inefficiencies may be the relative value of #3 starters and relief aces vs. #1 starters. There's no way Lester is worth roughly twice as much in AAV and more than $100 million in committed dollars than Liriano or David Robertson. The Orioles won with a #2, three #3's, a promising prospect in Gausman, and a 5 man deep bullpen. So, maybe the way to navigate these waters is to forget about Shields and Scherzer too, add Masterson and McCarthy/Santana to Buchholz, and hope that you get the Dr. Jeckell version of at least 2 of the 3 of them, giving you 2 #2-like performances. Throw in a reasonable season from the third plus improvement from Kelly and RDLR/Webster and you have the Orioles rotation. Unfortunately, most if not all of the potential relief aces have already signed, but maybe they can luck out and find their own Wade Davis and Kelvim Herrera from among the prospects.
The other obvious lesson, with the way the Red Sox are approaching this market, is that you have to develop an ace to have an ace. That means they have to stockpile prospects who have even a modest chance of becoming an ace. So there's no way I trade Owens, Rodriguez, Webster, or Barnes. If you can get value for Cecchini or Marrero, neither of which has a future in Boston over the next 5 years, then do that, but keep the young pitchers and hope one of them turns into a number 1A sometime in the next 3 years.