Not for nothing, but I'd be "for it" in that I think that's about the type of player / contract that the Sox will be in play for.
There are other avenues I'd prefer first, but I put Santander into a kind of a "3rd tier" bucket of how I view the off-season from an offensive standpoint.
Tier 1 - Soto
Tier 2 - Acquiring a good defensive 3b while moving Raffy to DH and getting rid of Yoshida for whatever you can.
Tier 3 - Getting someone in the Hernandez / Santander / CWalker grouping
Tier 57 - Running it back with pretty much exactly what you have / had. I don't think what they have in house is nearly good enough to even be a serious contender for WC1.
As to your point
@simplicio on Santander and Fenway, it's an interesting one and I get where you're coming from. But isn't Fenway pretty much always going to play like that because it's more of a doubles park than a home run park, because the Wall is almost always going to turn line drive home runs into singles and doubles (but will turn more "outs" into "hits"). Which at another level is why I think the "three true outcomes" mindset up and down a line up will never work in Boston, but that is for another thread.
Just for a quick glance, lets look at Mookie (just as a baseball player, not from a perspective of the trade which shall not be named) and JD Martinez. Two hitters that did incredibly well as Boston Red Sox. All data shows the season HR totals (actual) first and the expected home runs by park (Fenway) second.
Mookie Betts
2016 - 31 / 27
2017 - 24 / 16
2018 - 33 / 31
2019 - 29 / 30
2020 - 18 / 15
2021 - 24 / 21
2022 - 35 / 28
2023 - 39 / 28
2024 - 23 / 21
JDM
2016 - 22 / 15
2017 - 46 / 35
2018 - 46 / 38
2019 - 36 / 34
2020 - 7 / 7
2021 - 31 / 27
2022 - 16 / 16
2023 - 34 / 27
2024 - 16 / 12
Soto
2018 - 22 / 13
2019 - 39 / 29
2020 - 13 / 12
2021 - 29 / 24
2022 - 29 / 29
2023 - 35 /28
2024 - 45 / 45
Ortiz (we only have one year of data)
2016 - 38 / 32 (but would have been 50 expected in NY, 51 in Houston, 52 in Texas, 52 in Cincy, 54 in LA and 51 in SD)
I think people need to look at a lot more than expected home run and baseball savant data to determine how well someone's profile is going to play at Fenway Park, or better yet as a reason to say they're not a good fit. Because if one uses expected stats (relative to home run overlay) pretty much all players are going to look like bad fits for Fenway Park, including two that had a ton of success here and one that we all think will. It also showed (in its one year of data) that arguably the most important player in Red Sox history and a first ballot hall of famer was a much worse fit for Fenway Park than plenty of other stadiums. I'm very thankful we had him though.
(I also want to be clear that I'm not saying you're only looking at expected HR
@simplicio, I don't know the data you're using, it could be things far different from baseball savant and expected HR totals, and for all I know, Santander COULD be an awful fit for Fenway. I'm just assuming that the front office is looking at a ton of stuff that we don't have access to that goes light years beyond baseball savant data. I was just using your insight as a jumping off point for a larger discussion of how Fenway is going to play to suppress the home runs of most players, including ones that have in fact been excellent fits playing at Fenway Park).