Not even 24 hours before Cotillo starts catastrophizing again.
I remember when an Opening Day payroll of $8 million under the lux tax threshold was sensibly reported as a standard cushion for deadline additions. Remember when it was reported last summer that we were poking around on Verlander? Thats why you start with an OD payroll of $225 if you’re trying to reset the tax and stay under $233M.
What the hell is with this lede?
Weeks of inaction swiftly turned to chaos for the Red Sox on the final weekend of 2023…”
Chaos! We signed a starting pitcher and traded another in a deal that’s almost universally supported by the fan base. How is it chaos?
He’s writing from a preconceived lens, and it’s conveniently the one that gets everyone riled up. How is the anchor of this story that “(the agent for) at least one (aka
precisely one) free agent said that the Red Sox need to reduce payroll before pursuing him more aggressively”? With the amount of inferences he’s making elsewhere in the article, and the fact that that he’s summarizing (not quoting anonymously) that person’s account, he may just mean that the Sox are looking to trade Jansen — a guy with a substantial salary — for perfectly normal reasons. There are also 40-man implications to signing a FA at this point.
Breslow and Kennedy both said in November, that “financial constraints won’t be a limiting factor” — does he include that info? No. He just hits us yet again with the cynical “full throttle” comment, taken out of context.
I’m not a fan of Cotillo’s reporting.