The Pedro contract topped the league at the time it was signed. Granted, Pedro was already on the team, but re-signing dollars do count as much as free agent dollars.
Much like Newman, the Sox are not “Ready to deliver”– The 2025 Offseason News (& rumors?) Thread
- Thread starter chawson
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John Lackey was a pretty high priced FA. As was Carl Crawford.
The problem is that they've been burned by basically every single one. Manny worked out, but they tried to get out of that contract pretty early too.
Red Sox are the baseball equivalent to “The Chinese Restaurant” episode of Seinfeld.
I would add this to the annoying repetitive phrase list.
It's only <insert date>. There is plenty of time before spring training.
It's only <insert date>. There is plenty of time before spring training.
Literally every team that signs a free agent has been "burned" by that definition. Both Price and Lackey (and Pedro) helped the team win World Series titles. As did Manny. And JD Drew. And Dice-K. And Foulke.
Crawford was by far Theo's worst free agent signing, and was driven by Werner's asinine "win in more exciting fashion" bullshit - for which Theo and Tito ultimately took the fall. It was also a warning that it's best to focus big free agent signings on positions of need and on the top tier players, not 3rd tier players that field a position for which replacements can easily be found.
EDIT: Soto, Fried, Snell are examples of the top tier players in this market. Eovaldi is not, but the contract term was very reasonable. Signing Crawford was like signing Eovaldi to a Fried deal, assuming the Sox already had Atlanta's or LA's roster of starting pitching.
According to fernsand giants/blue jays favorites for Burns
Which means all is well.
Losing Fried wasn't a surprise - but Eovaldi?
Happiness is a choice. I am choosing to believe that this means Burnes will sign with the Red Sox.
Which means all is well.
Losing Fried wasn't a surprise - but Eovaldi?
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If they want to find the current version of Pedro, Schilling, Beckett or Sale through trades, great. But this team has had high priced (either in terms of money or assets) top tier pitching every time they've won the World Series in this century.
To be clear, I was not defending them. Just pointing out that they've been toward the worst possible outcome of the spectrum on several, which has probably caused some hesitance.
Totally agree
But what makes it worse as last year we were promised full throttle and this year they came out and said they were gonna get one if not two aces.
Agree. And you are likely 100% correct.
They Sox had the best possible outcome on several: Price should have been World Series MVP; Manny actually was WS MVP. Lackey(*) was 3-1 w/ a 2.77 ERA in the 2013 playoffs while winning the clincher.
If the team is focused solely on the downsides, they will not sign anyone. The downside proves that relying purely on free agents is not a good way to build a sustainable winner; the players get hurt and the payroll gets bloated, and the pick/pool penalties eventually catch up. But this team does not have to rely purely on free agents to become a contender, which is exactly the right time to spend on free agency, as the risks can be hedged.
*: An aside on Lackey - his work in shutting down the Tigers in Game 3 of the ALCS in a pitching duel against a future Hall of Fame starter went a long way to ensuring Papi's epic slam did not go to waste.
I get the sentiment, but in no way will I be "done" with them. They have so many young and exciting players on the team, and many more on the cusp of arriving. It actually is a tremendously exciting time to be a Sox fan. We're not quite THERE yet, but we're getting closer, even without major FA moves this offseason. At some point soon we'll have (barring trades) Duran, Abreu, Casas, Devers, Campbell, Anthony, Teel, and Mayer up and playing. How can anyone not be excited about that?
It’s been mentioned a couple times that Zac Gallen might get moved by AZ. With Christian Walker gone, seems like Casas would be a good fit there.
Casas would be a good fit here. Spend the effing money.
I’m going to sit a couple rounds out
I get that everyone is saying HERE WE GO AGAIN—and maybe we are—but the reality is, we’ve lost out on two guys so far. It’s not like everyone is off the board and everyone else is putting their laptops away at the meetings feeling good about what transpired for their teams.
Also, those two guys is really only one guy if we’re being realistic here. One of the guys received the most insane contract of all time from a bottomless pit owner—which by all reports was partly pushed there by a pretty insane bid of our own—and the other just received a deal from a top competitor that is also kind of insane.
So we’ve been outbid for one pitcher. If we get Burnes/Crochet and one of the Buhler/Flaherty:Mannea guys, I think they’re set up decently for a bit. It’s not like David Price solved all our problems in year 1 with Dombro.
Also, those two guys is really only one guy if we’re being realistic here. One of the guys received the most insane contract of all time from a bottomless pit owner—which by all reports was partly pushed there by a pretty insane bid of our own—and the other just received a deal from a top competitor that is also kind of insane.
So we’ve been outbid for one pitcher. If we get Burnes/Crochet and one of the Buhler/Flaherty:Mannea guys, I think they’re set up decently for a bit. It’s not like David Price solved all our problems in year 1 with Dombro.
As a contrarian, I would bring up Teel and start him with Wong backing him up, have Grissom battle Campbell for second base, not trade Casas for pitching, and resign Pivetta. Remember, though, I only wanted them to win one championship in my lifetime, and they've won four. I view them as a beloved novel with twists and turns and ups and downs that are all fascinating, and not as any a measurement of my self-esteem.
Because those players are going to lose a lot of 10-8 games? And most of them will leave when they reach free agency?
This might be the best, most exciting crop of home grown players since the 1970s. It was thrilling to watch Fisk/Rice/Lynn/Burleson etc... come along. It was still an era of enormous frustration, especially when most of them departed because ownership was tight fisted.
Plus Bello pitched much better the second half and is entering his prime and Houck is a stud. If any of Priester/Fitts/Sandlin work out in the next couple seasons, the pitching staff is fine. I am still excited about this team's future.
I am very unhappy about the way this offseason is unfolding, though.
From MLBTrade rumors - which talks about Boston's pursuit of Burnes:
In a separate column, McAdam writes that the third baseman is something of a divisive player in the Fenway Park offices. According to McAdam, manager Alex Cora and team president Sam Kennedy are more keen on a Bregman pursuit than Breslow happens to be. Cora is personally familiar with Bregman from his time as bench coach in Houston.
In a separate column, McAdam writes that the third baseman is something of a divisive player in the Fenway Park offices. According to McAdam, manager Alex Cora and team president Sam Kennedy are more keen on a Bregman pursuit than Breslow happens to be. Cora is personally familiar with Bregman from his time as bench coach in Houston.
The Rangers just paid 3/75 for Nate Eovaldi’s age 35-37 seasons. How is paying 8/218 for Fried’s 31-38 seasons “insane”? This is the market. These are the market rates in FA. We all know there is a steep premium to be paid in FA.
Burnes figures to get something similar or more. Will that team be “insane” too? I feel like Michael Keaton in the first Batman movie. You wanna get nuts? C’mon, let’s get nuts!
Burnes is the inflection point for me. He goes elsewhere and we’ve got real problems.
I get that this thread is a giant dumpster fire but can people please read before they post stuff?
This news has been posted, posted again, debated, yelled about, described as FO division, explained away, used as evidence that Cora is too involved, used as evidence that Breslow is too weak, and used as evidence Kennedy should be fired into the sun.
I don't know about "insane". But the short term future is much easier to project than the long term future, that's why I'd feel safer about Eovaldi being productive at 37 than Fried.
I'll be excited when they are up and producing. Right now most of these players are speculation.
Boy the Sox really should have considered extending Pivetta last offseason when he likely could have been had for a 3/$45M deal at the most.
I'm going to be disappointed if the Sox don't get Burnes now. I'd have preferred Fried but Burnes was a no. 2 choice. But..... even if they don't I don't reallly care. I don't lose my fucking shit and start outrage threads. I love the Sox regardless if they're built from Day One as a WS contender. I'd prefer they win but yeah...... 4 WS in my lifetime and my angst is forever chilled out. It's fine. It's a game for me now that I don't follow as much as I used to and I'm okay with that. I'm excited to see the young players. Like... more excited regardless if they end up in 4th place. The Sox winning or losing is not a fucking key to my happiness. I don't own the team, nor feel like ownership owes me..... as a fan, anything at all. If they want to send out a team full of AAAA types I'd honestly be fine with that. I just enjoying watching the 15-20 games I've been catching since 2020 and following the updates on my phone occasionally.
And again.... yes, I'd prefer the team to win, and to take steps towards building a competitive team. And I still think the team, if they do absolutely nothing else..... will still be a good competitive team that I'll enjoy following. And once again, yes.... I hope they get Burnes now and I'd be fine if they got Bregman and figured out a 3B/1B/DH platoon with him while holding onto Casas.
I'm going to be disappointed if the Sox don't get Burnes now. I'd have preferred Fried but Burnes was a no. 2 choice. But..... even if they don't I don't reallly care. I don't lose my fucking shit and start outrage threads. I love the Sox regardless if they're built from Day One as a WS contender. I'd prefer they win but yeah...... 4 WS in my lifetime and my angst is forever chilled out. It's fine. It's a game for me now that I don't follow as much as I used to and I'm okay with that. I'm excited to see the young players. Like... more excited regardless if they end up in 4th place. The Sox winning or losing is not a fucking key to my happiness. I don't own the team, nor feel like ownership owes me..... as a fan, anything at all. If they want to send out a team full of AAAA types I'd honestly be fine with that. I just enjoying watching the 15-20 games I've been catching since 2020 and following the updates on my phone occasionally.
And again.... yes, I'd prefer the team to win, and to take steps towards building a competitive team. And I still think the team, if they do absolutely nothing else..... will still be a good competitive team that I'll enjoy following. And once again, yes.... I hope they get Burnes now and I'd be fine if they got Bregman and figured out a 3B/1B/DH platoon with him while holding onto Casas.
Trades aside, here's my concern, if you miss out on Burnes your now looking at the "second tier" guys. Yep, there's some potential value that can be added there, but these guys may be likely to have more suitors than this year's big 3 and the cost will certainly be higher than anyone thought going in. I still think that they need 2 proven arms at the top of the rotation to make a legit run at a playoff spot next season. Burnes and Flaherty may be the best available FA combo now. If you want to accomplish something via trade I think we need to be prepared to give up two of ATMC/Casas.
If a WS title during the contract makes the contract a success, then sure, it was the best possible outcome.
I think it is very hard to argue with a straight face that the Sox got an even 50th percentile outcome from David Price or John Lackey.
Lackey:
102-71, 3.81 ERA (116 ERA+) with the Angels; made 33 starts each of his five full years in the majors
47-43, 4.46 ERA (94 ERA+) with the Sox; made 33, 28, 0, 29, and 21 starts with the Sox before getting traded at the deadline
Not a horrible outcome, but you don't pay top of the market for a 94 ERA+. That was a below 50th percentile outcome.
Price:
104-56, 3.09 ERA (126 ERA+) prior to coming to Boston; made 31, 34, 31, 27, 34, and 32 starts before coming to the Sox
46-24, 3.84 ERA (118 ERA+) with the Sox; made 35, 11, 30, and 22 starts prior to the pandemic and then the trade. Fine in terms of rate stats, but they signed him for 7 years and got 588 IP.
To some degree, yes. But there's always a breaking point.
In hindsight it looks like Snell was the missed opportunity. But it's still early. We will see.
If the big acquisition is Nick Pivetta, at least it will be a semblance of a hopeful plan. It''ll be evidence of another bridge year. Then maybe we'll watch as they rotate the kids gradually to the major league club. Something to look forward to IMO.
If they trade away cost controlled stud talent for some mediocre or unproven starting pitcher, that would be evidence of a long-term plan of "87 wins and anything can happen", which would be depressing AF.
Either way I'm bummed that we're the Minnesota Twins now, but at least I can imagine a home grown team in a few years that might be great despite Scrooge McDuck payrolls.
If they go sign Burnes and some bullpen arms and don't trade away the farm, that's probably best case scenario for me.
Eovaldi will be 37 heading into spring training of 2027. Fried will be 32 heading into the same spring training. Huge if, but if the young core of the team projects as we hope, we're a season or two into "the window" being wide open. I think the fair comparison or question here is do you prefer 37 year old Eovaldi in the last year of his contract at that particular point in time or 32 year old Fried who will still be with you for the next several of those "window open" seasons?
Zero chance they're signing Burnes. There was never any realistic chance they were signing Burnes just like there was never a realistic chance they were signing Fried. If we can agree that a) Burnes is the top FA pitcher on the market, overall; b) Fried was Boston's first choice; c) Boston wasn't anywhere close to coming to what it took to land their first choice then d) what makes anyone think for one second that they're going to pay what Boras wants for someone that wasn't even their first choice.
They're going to submit an offer on Burnes, I'm certain. I'm also certain that it's going to be short on what he gets by at least 1 year, probably 2 and at least $30m total dollars, and probably not even that close.
The more daunting thing to me is that - with Eovaldi and Kikuchi both gone and the fact that Flaherty is going to get far more than they're comfortable paying - the only (reasonable for what FSRedbird might actually do) path toward improving the pitching from what they had last year is the trade market. However now they've signaled a willingness to trade Casas and Mayer, and all we've heard even with that is that 1) Seattle isn't interested and 2) they aren't close on Crochet while factoring in 3) Pittsburgh just got their 1b giving up only Luis freaking Ortiz.
All of which are further data points in what many of us have been saying all along - hitting isn't nearly as valuable in trade as pitching, and you have to significantly "lose" a trade in terms of value in order to "win" something that pitches.
The pitching at the big league level on balance somewhere between "is in the bottom half of the league" and "stinks" and they have given no indication they're capable of doing anything that might rectify the situation in the short to medium term. Breslow has done a nice job with getting something in the way of depth, and at least he began addressing this issue in last year's draft, but there is a 4 year gap where pitching was neglected at all levels of the organization and drastically miscalculated in terms of what it would cost to acquire (via trade or free agency).
So here we are. Which is why I said that Bloom being fired was more like the start of the rebuild than the culmination of it. (Which is not acceptable, and should not have been the case, but was reality).
However - I really did err in that I thought and bought into the "delivery" talk that this year would be different. Not that Burnes or Fried or Bregman or Soto or... were ever happening, but that they'd go out and land some actual, credible MLB pitchers (Flaherty, Eovalid, Kikuchi, trade) and maybe some right handed hitting to balance the line up, both with term (ie at least 3 years) to not make them totally reliant on Devers, prospects and while maybe fixing the infield defense.
Unfortunately, even those things (which stupid me said were realistic while telling people that Fried and Burnes weren't realistic) don't appear to be happening. All of which is to say even my "pessimism" that I hoped for and packaged as "realism" was way too "optimistic" for what they would actually accomplish.
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To be clear I am not advocating this, I think spending to some supposed window when the prospects are ready would be a terrible idea given the variance and luck inherent in the game. If you’re only going to spend “when your window” is open, you’re really never going to spend because the time is never quite right.
This illustrates, I believe, the difference between Red Sox Nation generations. Those of us old enough to remember the pre-Impossible Dream Red Sox never thought we would see even one World Series championship. Did I want the Sox to make a splash in FA? Yes. Do I get frustrated in the moment when they don't land a player I'd hoped they would? Of course. But I know I will still be excited for Spring Training to start.
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I can't tell what they're doing baseball-wise, but the FO is doing a spectacular job of failing to communicate a sense of what they're trying to do as an organization. Is the goal to win a World Series? No wonder people fill in the blanks in such a negative way.
Henry is a really, really, really weird and reclusive dude, and that seems to be reflected in how the organization behaves publicly, and in what we're going through as fans.
Henry is a really, really, really weird and reclusive dude, and that seems to be reflected in how the organization behaves publicly, and in what we're going through as fans.
I am unhappy about it as well. Seriously unhappy. But I won't be "done" with the Sox given all the exciting young players they currently have and will have soon in the majors.
I've mostly supported this organization hoping that we would get to this point. We're here and I want to see the next step taken. If you intend to sign one of the few top of the rotation arms that come along in an off season, this is now the accepted cost.
This. All of this. So ... when does the bargain bin shopping begin?
Unfortunately, they're all going to need to hit like monsters to make up for the pitching
I apologize if this has been posted before - this is the first time I have read about it.
As a reminder, the Red Sox were a tick above MLB average in team ERA at 4.04 (MLB avg was 4.07). They also had a team ERA+ of 106. I wouldn't say the pitching is "fine" or anything like that, but it's not a complete dumpster fire either.
Where they struggled was total runs allowed per game. They were 8th worst allowing 4.61 runs a game. And this is on the defense. This is one reason why they're considering Bergman, who would be a significant upgrade defensively for them. And why a full season of Story (LOL) would be an enormous benefit.
Crawford wasn't a 3rd tier player when he was signed. He was a great player with the Rays who just completely and unexpectedly collapsed at age 29. He was a 4 time All Star, was the bast base stealer in the game, and came in 7th in the MVP voting with a 7 WAR season in his free agent year. It was Theo's worst signing, but it was more on Crawford than on Theo for not being able to predict an extraordinarily unlikely outcome.
You know who were 3rd tier players when they were acquired? David Ortiz, Bill Meuller, Kevin Millar, Shane Victorino, Mike Napoli, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, and Coco Crisp. The Red Sox have never really played in the top level of free agency, but have found good players that were a fit for the roster at the lower levels (and an occasional Hall of Famer for nothing). I don't know if that's harder to do in the days of 80 person analytic departments, but if they can't get back to that, then it's going to be very tough to put together a great team moving forward.
The goal is to build the best team that they can within the budget parameters that they’ve established to meet the profit projections that they’ve promised to their shareholders. I think that they would love to win a World Series, but the most important thing is meeting the profit projections, just like every company with private equity investors.
I think I’d appreciate if they just came out and told the truth instead of trying to feed us bull shit every year.
Sounds like a fun way to run a team. So happy we have shareholders as top priority. Maybe they’ll make more money if they increase ticket prices more.
I remember back in the old days, before the Winter Meetings, when Breslow said we would be looking at going beyond the threshold .... at the time I thought he meant the 237 million ceiling....but I now realize he didn't mean ceiling.... he meant basement.
At the beginning of the off-season, if asked "do you want the Sox so sign Soto to a 15 year, $765 million dollar deal, or Sign Fried to a 8 year, $218 million dollar deal," I think the majority of the board would have answered no AS LONG AS there were next moves. So now we wait for the next moves and continue to process the baggage caused by the last few years of limited FA action.
It already has. Our only signing so far is one year contract for a 37 year relief pitcher on the down slope of his career with comes with a scumbag discount.
Missed the Wilson signing?
This is fair but, but the rotation and pen are in worse shape today than during the season. Sure, we could hit on more reclamation projects next year and improve a bit, but we could also miss on more and end up even worse.
I begged them to (so did others) and said they should have traded him if they weren't going to do it. Oh well.
Unfortunately, it already began. I blame myself for not being smart enough to see it.
But think about the closest they came to actually landing something that can be called a starting pitcher. If we believe any of the "post reports" it was either 1) them being in on Kikuchi and not landing him or 2) Bieber on a 1 year deal where they (ostensibly) offered more money than Cleveland and he said "no thanks".
So to me that means they did have someone in that Kikuchi / Eovaldi / Flaherty bucket (Kikuchi) and didn't do what was necessary to land him. So they went to the first of their "one year" specials (whom they didn't get). So now we're on to more one year specials.