They’re on to 2017.
The conclusion of the World Series immediately sets in motion the start of offseason player movement, beginning with the onset of free agency for all eligible players and a host of decisions about player options. The Red Sox, as expected,
exercised the $13.5 million option on Clay Buchholz and declined the $3.75 million option on Ryan Hanigan.
Those moves help to define the Sox’ commitments for 2017 which, in turn, gives some sense of what kind of resources they might have for the forthcoming season, while painting a picture of a bit less financial freedom than one might anticipate.
Start with this: According to a major league source, the Red Sox spent roughly $215 million to $220 million on actual team payroll in 2016. For Major League Baseball’s luxury tax calculations, that number will come in under that figure (it doesn’t include, for instance, most of the roughly $20 million paid to Allen Craig or Rusney Castillo, both of whom spent most to all of the season off of the 40-man roster), but the Red Sox will end up paying the luxury tax for the second straight year, having gone well past the $189 million threshold.
Meanwhile, even with the retirement of David Ortiz and the free agency of Koji Uehara, Junichi Tazawa, and Brad Ziegler, the Sox’ salary commitments for 2017 already appear to be close to what they spent last year, based on the expectation that they’ll want to preserve roughly $10 million for in-season roster moves.
Right now, the Red Sox have roughly $136 million in guaranteed commitments to players as calculated for luxury tax purposes (which use average annual values of the life of a contract, rather than a single year). However, Craig and Castillo are not part of that calculation so long as they are not on the 40-man roster. They’ll nonetheless cost the team an additional $24 million in paychecks.
On top of that, the Sox have eight players who, as of right now, appear likely to open the year on the big league roster who are arbitration-eligible. Based on the projections of MLBTradeRumors.com, that group will account for roughly another $23 million.
Add to those projections pre-arbitration-eligible players like Mookie Betts, Travis Shaw, and Eduardo Rodriguez, and then tack on another $10 million or so for in-season moves and an additional $13.5 million for the contribution that every team must make to MLB’s medical benefits pool, and the present commitments start to near what the Sox spent in 2016.