@finnVT I get that people want to see them make a commitment. I think that's fair. I don't like it either that they won't just spend spend spend like the Mets, Dodgers, and Yankees, but that's the world we live in, and I'm willing to accept that.
Let me try to lay out my thinking rather than being snarky (and I apologize for being snarky, to everyone, especially
@Jimbodandy ).
The team's strategy when it was most successful was to spread out a large payroll over one or two big commitments and then the rest over a lot of smaller commitments. They abandoned that approach when they signed Price and extended Sale and Bogaerts all at once, and it worked for a little while, and then it blew up in their faces. Yes 2018 was worth it, but they had to deal Price and Mookie (or felt they had to) get out from under those deals. Again, I don't like it, in fact I hated it, but that's the world we live in.
And
since that's the world we live in, I don't want to see them just spending money on risky free agents like pitchers in their 30's to prove something. What I think is most likely going to happen is we're going to see a bunch of extensions in the next year: Crochet at 8/200 or so, Campbell and Anthony at something similar (remember, not even a year and a half ago they extended Devers for one of the fifteen richest contracts in baseball history, and followed that quickly with team-friendly extensions for Bello and Rafaela). If those extensions happen, we'll pretty quickly be in the top ten or even higher in payroll again.
And yeah, I'd rather they did that than blow money on Fried or Burnes, because what happens when we do that is in two or three years they'll say "oh, we can't afford this" and staple Anthony to Burnes to get rid of the contract.