This might be your point but over the Dombrowski years they did not, on the whole, make particularly smart signings, draft well or develop young players. At least not at the level of the top teams in the league. And the holes in the roster today stem from that. They did well patching them with short-term deals in 2021 but not nearly as well last year, which is pretty much going to be the case when you only have a few stars you can count on -- sometimes you'll do well patching up a roster and sometimes you won't unless you're an unbelievable GM.This deal in a vacuum is insane. It's well beyond what anyone thought Bogaerts would get.
It's also the market price for free agent Xander Bogaerts.
I can't fault them for not wanting any part of any of these megadeals individually. And yet, if they're just never going to be competitive for the top tier of free agents, I think that's a bad strategy. Signing the middle class free agents of the world works in the NFL, where there's a hard salary cap and depth is paramount. But this is the Boston Red Sox. The whole point of making smart signings, drafting well, and developing young players is so that you can then sign marquee, star players to expensive deals, especially when they're your own players who are durable, in their prime, and have proven they can win in Boston.
I don't think this ownership group is cheap. I do think that if they think they can build a sustainable contender filling out the roster with the Nate Eovaldis and Trevor Storys of the world, they're mistaken.
The other thing that happened is the last crop of stars they developed did not sign extensions. Some of that is perhaps because the team did not offer enough but we heard in the Betts case, they definitely tried to at least some extent.
Develop some homegrown stars and everything else gets way easier, especially if they really like it here and will sign an extension before FA. Of course the problem is that everyone wants to do that but that's really how you build a consistently good team and there's no real way around it.