Red Sox Video
The Red Sox are going to add during the offseason, likely through both free agency and the trade market. Like just about every team in baseball, they could use some more pitching and a good right-handed hitter. Beyond that, we really don’t know much about the team’s plans. Maybe they expect to slot their promising hitting prospects right into the lineup, or maybe they'll slow-play them and land a big-name free agent like Willy Adames or Alex Bregman. One thing we can get a sense of is how much money the team has to play with. Sources like RosterResource, Cot’s Contracts, MLB Trade Rumors, and Spotrac can give us a sense of where the team’s payroll is right now, where it’s been in the past, and how it stacks up against the rest of the league. All of that can give us a better sense of what we might expect going forward, even if we don’t know the plan. So let’s start with what we know.
RosterResource has Boston’s total payroll for this season at an estimated $183,361,623, which makes it the 11th-highest in baseball. I know it feels like the team has been scrimping, but it’s at least worth remembering that as things stand right now, they’re already pretty close to running a top-10 payroll. The other important number relates to the Competitive Balance Tax, also known as the luxury tax. For CBT purposes, RosterResource has the Red Sox at $222,674,123. That number is larger because it factors in things like average annual value adjustments, player benefits, salaries for minor leaguers on the 40-man roster, and so on.
Like every club, Boston has less payroll committed for the 2025 season, because free agents like Kenley Jansen, Chris Martin, Luis Garcia, Nick Pivetta, Tyler O’Neill, Danny Jansen, and Lucas Sims are coming off the books. If you combine RosterResource’s estimates with the estimated salaries that Jarren Duran, Tanner Houck, and Kutter Crawford will receive in arbitration, that brings you to somewhere between $127 and $131 million. All of this is to say that coming into the 2025 season, if the Red Sox wanted to do nothing more than keep the same payroll as they had in 2024, they’d have something like $53 million to play with. If they decided to spend a little bit more, going right up to but not exceeding the luxury tax threshold, they’d probably have an extra $10 million on top of that (in terms of average annual value).
However, recent history tells us that we should probably expect the Red Sox to shoot a little bit higher. The table below shows payroll figures tracked by Cot’s Contracts. The numbers in parentheses are Boston’s rank in each category, and that's what we're interested in.
| Year | Opening Day 26-Man | Year End 40-Man | CBT 40-Man |
| 2024 | $171,242,167 (12) | N/A | $223,105,947 (12) |
| 2023 | $181,207,484 (12) | $203,096,349 (10) | $225,767,320 (12) |
| 2022 | $206,553,059 ( 6) | $217,089,051 ( 6) | $236,149,678 ( 5) |
| 2021 | $180,147,694 ( 8) | $187,356,913 ( 6) | $207,640,471 ( 6) |
| 2020 | $ 73,931,812 ( 4) | $ 64,338,341 (13) | $184,859,384 ( 8) |
| 2019 | $236,171,429 ( 1) | $228,403,219 ( 1) | $243,653,717 ( 1) |
| 2018 | $233,752,429 ( 1) | $230,396,923 ( 1) | $239,481,745 ( 1) |
| 2017 | $197,041,179 ( 3) | $189,218,620 ( 4) | $191,888,422 ( 6) |
| 2016 | $197,899,679 ( 4) | $200,563,162 ( 3) | $204,012,716 ( 5) |
| 2015 | $184,345,996 ( 3) | $185,568,958 ( 3) | $199,491,005 ( 3) |
| 2014 | $156,350,125 ( 5) | $168,178,367 ( 5) | $185,922,329 ( 5) |
| 2013 | $154,555,500 ( 4) | $176,481,441 ( 3) | $177,774,334 ( 3) |
| 2012 | $175,249,119 ( 2) | $168,614,614 ( 3) | $177,952,823 ( 2) |
As you can see, Cot’s has the Sox with the 12th-highest payroll and luxury tax figure in each of the past two seasons. But from 2020 to 2022, they had routinely been in the top eight, and from 2012 to 2019, they were almost always at the very top of the league. If the Red Sox really want to give themselves the best chance to maximize this competitive window, they could jump back into the deep end, where they've lived for pretty much this entire century. This season, the Mets, Yankees, and Dodgers are the only teams with estimated payrolls above $300 million. The Phillies and the Astros are in the next tier, with payrolls approaching $250 million. If the Red Sox are willing to run a top-five payroll, that means paying the luxury tax and adding at least another $115 million in 2025 salary. That wouldn't bring them anywhere near the Yankees, Dodgers, or Mets, but still, for that kind of money, no free agent would be off limits — not even Juan Soto – and the team would be able to sign multiple difference-makers. There are plenty of other factors that will affect free agency, but as the Red Sox start building for the next season and beyond, having a sense of their spending habits in the past should help us get a sense of how they see themselves going forward.
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