Much like Newman, the Sox are not “Ready to deliver”– The 2025 Offseason News (& rumors?) Thread

allmanbro

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The Blue Jays. I think he basically has a significant Blue Jays offer in his back pocket but doesn’t want to go there. So we’ve got a game of chicken.
Man, what a sad story these last 3-4 years have been for the BJs. If FAs are really so opposed to signing in Toronto, it's a big problem. There does seem to be a malaise around the team. Is that why noone wants to sign, or is MLB in Canada in trouble?
 

bosockboy

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Man, what a sad story these last 3-4 years have been for the BJs. If FAs are really so opposed to signing in Toronto, it's a big problem. There does seem to be a malaise around the team. Is that why noone wants to sign, or is MLB in Canada in trouble?
You wonder if it affects whether Montreal gets the Rays.
 

cantor44

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Tanner Scott to the Dodgers.

If they don't win 120 games and the World Series, are they the biggest failure in MLB history?

View: https://twitter.com/JeffPassan/status/1881007419557593289
Jesus H Christ, this is ridiculous. What the Dodgers are doing feels worse than the Yankees in the early 2000s. I don't see how a league can accept this kind of inequity. The Dodgers are essentially an all-star team, having a purchased a majority of their players. It's not good for the game.
 

mikcou

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Jesus H Christ, this is ridiculous. What the Dodgers are doing feels worse than the Yankees in the early 2000s. I don't see how a league can accept this kind of inequity. The Dodgers are essentially an all-star team, having a purchased a majority of their players. It's not good for the game.
Maybe other owners should like pay players? Way too many teams trending their payrolls around what revenue sharing and national media money shares are.
 

BigSoxFan

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Maybe other owners should like pay players? Way too many teams trending their payrolls around what revenue sharing and national media money shares are.
Yeah, the Roki stuff is far more annoying because they were just gifted a young potential ace for peanuts. That sucks. But I have no issues with them taking advantage of an environment where very few teams want to spend money in FA because it’s bad “value”. That’s all fine and dandy but those same teams can’t whine when the fat cats like the Dodgers scoop up available talent.

The Dodgers are playing within the rules of the game and they’re flexing their muscles due to their financial advantage.
 

mikcou

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Yeah, the Roki stuff is far more annoying because they were just gifted a young potential ace for peanuts. That sucks. But I have no issues with them taking advantage of an environment where very few teams want to spend money in FA because it’s bad “value”. That’s all fine and dandy but those same teams can’t whine when the fat cats like the Dodgers scoop up available talent.

The Dodgers are playing within the rules of the game and they’re flexing their muscles due to their financial advantage.
Agreed. The Roki deal and the rules there provide an uneven playing field.

The reaction to Scott (and guys like Teoscar) should be why are other teams not willing to beat what is quite frankly a very reasonable valuation.
 

BigSoxFan

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Agreed. The Roki deal and the rules there provide an uneven playing field.

The reaction to Scott (and guys like Teoscar) should be why are other teams not willing to beat what is quite frankly a very reasonable valuation.
I mean, look at Baltimore. You have a young team with a lot of cheap, controllable talent and what have they done this offseason? Their big acquisition was Tyler O’Neill, which is looking like a potential overpay compared to the market if they had just held out. Then, they added a bunch of 1 year deals for vet pitchers like Sugano, Kittredge, and Morton. I’d be a little annoyed if I were an O’s fan. Not an exciting offseason for a team that is pretty close to contention.
 

OCD SS

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Agreed. The Roki deal and the rules there provide an uneven playing field.
How so? The Dodgers have been building a place where players want to play since the Punto trade; their recouping on that longterm investment isn’t cheating.

The only issue here seems to be that the player had the right to choose where he wanted play. Does anyone have a solution that works if that’s the case?
 

DeadlySplitter

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"The Red Sox did stay in touch with Scott throughout the winter, sources said, but the suggestion that Boston offered more than the Dodgers in terms of both years and AAV was described as “very inaccurate” by someone with knowledge of the process Sunday afternoon. The Red Sox were thought to be wary of going to four years for Scott, who will be 34 at the end of the season." - Cotillo

"Sources continue to indicate that adding a right-handed bat continues to be Boston’s top priority with bullpen help being looked at as a secondary need. Free agent Alex Bregman and Cardinals trade candidate Nolan Arenado remain the two big-name — yet imperfect — fits the Red Sox have considered. Boston could be waiting on either Bregman (short-term deal?) or the Cardinals (salary dump?) to get desperate as spring training draws closer." - Cotillo

https://www.masslive.com/redsox/2025/01/as-tanner-scott-joins-dodgers-where-will-red-sox-turn-for-bullpen-addition.html
 

simplicio

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Agreed. The Roki deal and the rules there provide an uneven playing field.

The reaction to Scott (and guys like Teoscar) should be why are other teams not willing to beat what is quite frankly a very reasonable valuation.
This guy is worth the third highest AAV and fifth highest total deal for a reliever ever?
94981
To me that only looks like a worthwhile deal if your team flat out doesn't care about budgets. I would not be happy if Breslow had exceeded it.
 

Hank Scorpio

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How so? The Dodgers have been building a place where players want to play since the Punto trade; their recouping on that longterm investment isn’t cheating.

The only issue here seems to be that the player had the right to choose where he wanted play. Does anyone have a solution that works if that’s the case?
Not really a solution, but I hope the next CBA states that any deferred money will be applied as if it’s being paid out over the length of the actual contract, and turns Ohtani into a $70m/yr hit and really fucks the Dodgers over royally.

My sole hope for the next CBA is essentially centered on fucking over the Dodgers.
 

mikcou

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How so? The Dodgers have been building a place where players want to play since the Punto trade; their recouping on that longterm investment isn’t cheating.

The only issue here seems to be that the player had the right to choose where he wanted play. Does anyone have a solution that works if that’s the case?
The cap on international free agents below 25. Generally, I think it works for guys under 18 or 20 from the Dominican. I dont think it works for proven Japanese professional players. What would Roki get without a cap? $250M?
 

simplicio

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The cap on international free agents below 25. Generally, I think it works for guys under 18 or 20 from the Dominican. I dont think it works for proven Japanese professional players. What would Roki get without a cap? $250M?
He's 23, he'd get 400.
 

8slim

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Jesus H Christ, this is ridiculous. What the Dodgers are doing feels worse than the Yankees in the early 2000s. I don't see how a league can accept this kind of inequity. The Dodgers are essentially an all-star team, having a purchased a majority of their players. It's not good for the game.
This seems like whining. Every team can pony up to sign FAs. It appears that most of them have decided to prioritize their bottom line over really going for it. That’s not the Dodgers fault.
 

mikcou

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This guy is worth the third highest AAV and fifth highest total deal for a reliever ever?
View attachment 94981
To me that only looks like a worthwhile deal if your team flat out doesn't care about budgets. I would not be happy if Breslow had exceeded it.
Hes been an elite reliever for the past two years and is at prime for the next couple of years. Id be perfectly happy going to that range; seems pretty equivalent to giving a 36 year old Jansen a 2/32 to me. Honestly, not being willing to seems like an argument to never give a reliever a four year deal.
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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Yeah the deferred money wasn’t meant to be abused in this manner. Perfectly within the rules, but exploited to an absurd level.
If it's that exploitable, why aren't more teams doing it? There surely will be consequences for deferring all that money, but there's really nothing stopping other teams from taking that same risk.
 

simplicio

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Hes been an elite reliever for the past two years and is at prime for the next couple of years. Id be perfectly happy going to that range; seems pretty equivalent to giving a 36 year old Jansen a 2/32 to me. Honestly, not being willing to seems like an argument to never give a reliever a four year deal.
If he'd kept his walk rate down last year I think it would have been a fine valuation, but I don't see any evidence that 2023 was anything but an outlier in that regard.
 

Petagine in a Bottle

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Tanner Scott has been “elite” for two years, but how likely is it that those are his peak years? Based on his age, probably, right?

Most valuable relievers in 2019, based on fWAR

Liam Hendriks
Kirby Yates
Josh Hader
Seth Lugo
Brandon Workman
Felipe Vazquez
Taylor Rogers
Chapman
Nick Anderson
Hansel Robles
Ken Giles
Roberto Osuna
Giovanny Gallegos
Ryan Pressly
Brad Hand
 

scottyno

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This seems like whining. Every team can pony up to sign FAs. It appears that most of them have decided to prioritize their bottom line over really going for it. That’s not the Dodgers fault.
The dodgers had a $450m payroll last year including the tax. This year it will likely be over 500, next year it probably will too. With the amount of future money they've already committed it seems unlikely to dip any time soon. Almost no other team, maybe even no other team, can afford to do that.
 

8slim

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The dodgers had a $450m payroll last year including the tax. This year it will likely be over 500, next year it probably will too. With the amount of future money they've already committed it seems unlikely to dip any time soon. Almost no other team, maybe even no other team, can afford to do that.
Do we have a sense of how many teams have/will spend to the various tax levels?

Maybe no team would spend on as *many* deals as the Dodgers have, but it strikes me that many could spend as much on any *one* of LA’s deals.
 

scottyno

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Do we have a sense of how many teams have/will spend to the various tax levels?

Maybe no team would spend on as *many* deals as the Dodgers have, but it strikes me that many could spend as much on any *one* of LA’s deals.
Spending on one of LA's deals probably doesn't get you the player though. Suppose every team in baseball offered Tanner Scott the same deal he just signed, why wouldn't he sign with the Dodgers? At this point if the Dodgers have an opening and want a player a team probably needs to beat their offer by a significant amount which is hard when you're bidding against a team that seems to have an unlimited payroll.
 

8slim

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Spending on one of LA's deals probably doesn't get you the player though. Suppose every team in baseball offered Tanner Scott the same deal he just signed, why wouldn't he sign with the Dodgers? At this point if the Dodgers have an opening and want a player a team probably needs to beat their offer by a significant amount which is hard when you're bidding against a team that seems to have an unlimited payroll.
It’s every other team’s job to either offer enough to sign a guy, or convince him that they are a title contender.

What are people suggesting here? There be a rule against a team signing “too much” subjectively great talent? The team with the best Fan Duel odds to win the title have a cap imposed?
 

JCizzle

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It’s every other team’s job to either offer enough to sign a guy, or convince him that they are a title contender.

What are people suggesting here? There be a rule against a team signing “too much” subjectively great talent? The team with the best Fan Duel odds to win the title have a cap imposed?
I wouldn’t mind a rule that prevents or limits the deferred money stuff if that was basically a cheat code for them.
 

Rasputin

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What are people suggesting here? There be a rule against a team signing “too much” subjectively great talent? The team with the best Fan Duel odds to win the title have a cap imposed?
That it's pretty fucked that one team can just buy most of the best players.
 

simplicio

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It’s every other team’s job to either offer enough to sign a guy, or convince him that they are a title contender.

What are people suggesting here? There be a rule against a team signing “too much” subjectively great talent? The team with the best Fan Duel odds to win the title have a cap imposed?
I think a cap and floor would realistically be good for the sport, given the lack of an infinite talent pool. The current system wasn't built to handle a team deciding to just buy the best available player at every position regardless of cost.
 

NickEsasky

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Bunch of whiners in here. “Oh don’t you dare spend money on players! You’re supposed to only draft and develop and win the World Series for having the most home grown team that spend the most efficiently.”
 

8slim

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Bunch of whiners in here. “Oh don’t you dare spend money on players! You’re supposed to only draft and develop and win the World Series for having the most home grown team that spend the most efficiently.”
That’s what it comes across as to me. Why don’t the Dodgers care about doing things the only true way to earn a title?! Where are their extensions for AAA players? Why don’t they cling to a self imposed budget that’s not tied to revenue?!
 

TheDogMan

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This guy is worth the third highest AAV and fifth highest total deal for a reliever ever?
View attachment 94981
To me that only looks like a worthwhile deal if your team flat out doesn't care about budgets. I would not be happy if Breslow had exceeded it.
Why, would it hamper Boston going forward? He looks like a big difference maker for 2025. Sox way under cap. Sox could pay 60 mil a year for Vlad and still be under next year. Not that they would or should but they could. Sox look like a team with less thump, better starting pitching and a worse bullpen IMO.Not ready for prime time even though they say they will spend the money to get where they need to go they do not, over and over again. Who cares if they overpay a couple of guys to give us a chance. They still would be well under the cap for 25 and likely 26. I sure don't. Frankly, if winning were important to me as a player, the Sox are not a team I would find attractive with their recent history of an ownership which appears uncaring and disingenuous. Wish I were wrong. What happened? Is it all Redbird Capital?
 

8slim

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That it's pretty fucked that one team can just buy most of the best players.
Most of the best? Wasn’t Hernandez a guy whose worth was hotly debated here? People were incredulous that Snell got 8 years as a post-30 starter. Today folks are saying Scott’s walk rate is unsustainable for a 4 year deal. Comforto? Kim?

These are all great pieces, IMHO, but they’re also all guys that some folks here were not interested in signing due to long term contract issues or “blocking” our emerging prospects. I really don’t know what people want.
 

simplicio

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Bunch of whiners in here. “Oh don’t you dare spend money on players! You’re supposed to only draft and develop and win the World Series for having the most home grown team that spend the most efficiently.”
That’s what it comes across as to me. Why don’t the Dodgers care about doing things the only true way to earn a title?! Where are their extensions for AAA players? Why don’t they cling to a self imposed budget that’s not tied to revenue?!
Cool strawmen, both of you. Who's saying the Dodgers shouldn't be doing this? They're totally within their rights to do so, but superteams in sports are inevitably fucking tedious and the product and health of the sport as a whole is probably better off if they level the playing field somehow in the next CBA. And I'm more invested in the health of the sport than seeing how many allstars LA can fit onto their roster.
 

JCizzle

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Cool strawmen, both of you. Who's saying the Dodgers shouldn't be doing this? They're totally within their rights to do so, but superteams in sports are inevitably fucking tedious and the product and health of the sport as a whole is probably better off if they level the playing field somehow in the next CBA. And I'm more invested in the health of the sport than seeing how many allstars LA can fit onto their roster.
The flip side is that I’m furious at what the new NBA CBA is forcing the Celtics to go through!
 

jmanny24

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Most of the best? Wasn’t Hernandez a guy whose worth was hotly debated here? People were incredulous that Snell got 8 years as a post-30 starter. Today folks are saying Scott’s walk rate is unsustainable for a 4 year deal. Comforto? Kim?

These are all great pieces, IMHO, but they’re also all guys that some folks here were not interested in signing due to long term contract issues or “blocking” our emerging prospects. I really don’t know what people want.
That's because people want perfection. They want players that check 90-100% of the boxes and they want them for the least money possible. Nobody is saying they need to go out and spend like drunken soldiers, but it is ok to spend money on talent even if it's not perfect talent. 99% of players have things we don't like about them as players, but that doesn't mean they won't make the team better. Unfortunately Andrew Friedman seems to be the only one living by his philosophy of "if you're rational about every free agent, you'll finish 3rd on every free agent."
 

chawson

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At the risk of starting another tax code tangent, one ethically iffy element of the deferred payments from what I can tell is that players may not have to pay taxes on the deferred payments in the years they collect them, depending on where they live.

That's from this Ohtani contract explainer in The Athletic.
Ohtani is said to have seen a slew of benefits in the structure: It gives the Dodgers payroll and luxury tax flexibility to add more talent. It’s also said to have the potential to provide him some tax benefits — particularly if during the period he is drawing $68 million he is living in Japan, rather than California. But the specific potential tax advantages weren’t immediately clear.
Major drag for the state of California, if true.

Drellich has a lot of other info on the Dodgers' deferred contract strategy here, including this line from Boras:
Ultimately, Snell wasn’t ripped away from another team because the Dodgers were willing to do deferrals and other teams weren’t. He signed in L.A. because, as Boras put it, “he received a market-value offer from the team he desired the most.”
 

NickEsasky

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Cool strawmen, both of you. Who's saying the Dodgers shouldn't be doing this? They're totally within their rights to do so, but superteams in sports are inevitably fucking tedious and the product and health of the sport as a whole is probably better off if they level the playing field somehow in the next CBA. And I'm more invested in the health of the sport than seeing how many allstars LA can fit onto their roster.
I’m just putting two and two together here. Plenty of posters here swear free agency is a completely inefficient way of building a team that hamstrings them financially in the future while also saying baseball needs rules in place to prevent teams like the Dodgers from flexing financial muscle or using deferrals to build awesome teams that win the World Series.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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I wouldn’t mind a rule that prevents or limits the deferred money stuff if that was basically a cheat code for them.
Any team can use this cheat code. It’s up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A.

Why other teams aren’t using it isn’t a Dodger or MLB problem. It’s an individual team problem.
 

8slim

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Cool strawmen, both of you. Who's saying the Dodgers shouldn't be doing this? They're totally within their rights to do so, but superteams in sports are inevitably fucking tedious and the product and health of the sport as a whole is probably better off if they level the playing field somehow in the next CBA. And I'm more invested in the health of the sport than seeing how many allstars LA can fit onto their roster.
I’m just not particularly moved by the “health of the sport” stuff. If LA wins titles the next few years in a row then I’ll be more sympathetic, for sure. And I get that the deferred payments may be a loophole that needs to be closed.

However, the griping here just strikes me as people being upset that one team is going balls out to win while ours is not.
 

CKDexterHaven

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Why can’t we have a conflicted, multi-dimensional perspective?

I appreciate the Dodgers’ passionate commitment to putting the best team possible on the field. I appreciate they are willing to innovate/creat ways to sign players.

I am envious of their payroll and resentful that my team isn’t operating at nearly the same level.

I am a little ‘disgusted’ by the lack of a hard(er) cap (and a floor), because I’d rather see competition as something other than a finance war.

Dumb question, though—if Sox hesitation to offering contracts to players who would ostensibly be valuable for two years but a “drag” for two years after that is based on a projection of a window for being able to compete… is there really ever a ‘more open window?’ Isn’t it pretty much accepted that it’s a crapshoot once you’re In the playoffs? So we don’t want to give a Bregman a contract because he may give us a better chance of making and advancing in the playoffs in ‘25 because he may be a drag on the budget in ‘27-28? So, when Do you sign impact players who aren’t young? If your window is wider because of higher expectations, wouldn’t that give you even less rationale for signing one? Because it’s needed less? Doesn’t strike me as sustainable to say, ”Never.” So is the issue in this case a conflicting valuation between Breslow vs Cora, or is it the current ownership ethos?
 

TheDogMan

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Most of the best? Wasn’t Hernandez a guy whose worth was hotly debated here? People were incredulous that Snell got 8 years as a post-30 starter. Today folks are saying Scott’s walk rate is unsustainable for a 4 year deal. Comforto? Kim?

These are all great pieces, IMHO, but they’re also all guys that some folks here were not interested in signing due to long term contract issues or “blocking” our emerging prospects. I really don’t know what people want.
I want an ownership group willing to spend the money required to have a great chance to win. One that recognizes we have an opportunity to pay top of market prices for really good players to supplement the young talent while those young players should be on very cheap contracts for the value we expect. After the Sox recent history I am being very reasonable.
 

Salem's Lot

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I’m more pissed off at the several teams that seem to be taking the revenue checks and putting it in the owners pockets instead of into the team. If anyone is hurting the MLB product, it’s those teams.
 

8slim

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I’m more pissed off at the several teams that seem to be taking the revenue checks and putting it in the owners pockets instead of into the team. If anyone is hurting the MLB product, it’s those teams.
This is an excellent point and I wholeheartedly agree.
 

scottyno

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That’s what it comes across as to me. Why don’t the Dodgers care about doing things the only true way to earn a title?! Where are their extensions for AAA players? Why don’t they cling to a self imposed budget that’s not tied to revenue?!
Because they have an 8 billion dollar tv deal and play in LA
 

SouthernBoSox

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Because they have an 8 billion dollar tv deal and play in LA
I think really the heart is the issues is that we aren’t talking about payrolls within $100mm. We are talking about actually cash outlay differences in excess of half a billion dollars.

I don’t know the solution. And I do feel that the bottom of the league is disgustingly cheap and needs reform.

But this doesn’t feel right. The Red Sox can’t do this. The Yankees can’t. The Mets can’t. There’s some systemic problems here.
 

SuperDieHard

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If you look at it from the perspective of revenue being a reflection of the number of fans a team has, larger market teams with a larger fan base make more fans happy when they win, and theoretically should have a greater chance at winning than smaller market teams with fewer fans if you want the most number of fans to be happy. This is what does tend to happen, although maybe not proportionally enough (if for example there are 3X as many Dodger fans than Pirate fans ideally you have Dodgers winning 3X that of Pirates) The trick is to keep the advantage that larger market teams have from being overbearing to the point that certain teams never have a shot at winning , or certain teams become juggernaut dynasties as that is certainly counterproductive to overall league interest. When you look at the penalties that going over the second luxury tax level imposes, they’re not insignificant, but apparently we’re finding out they’re not quite strong enough to stop the Dodgers, and also not incentivizing smaller market teams to spend enough, so they still need tweaking…
 

8slim

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Today’s discussion kicked off because LA signed 30 year old Scott for 4 years/$72 million.

Two years ago the Sox signed 35 year old Kenley Jansen to a 2 year/$32 million deal. Given age and value, they’re pretty similar.

What exactly was preventing the Sox, or any other team, from topping LA’s offer? I’m not even advocating that they should have, but it sure seems like LA merely signed the guy for a market appropriate deal.