Of course it's usually not a bad idea to look at what Mr. Epstein is doing. Last year he signed Davis to a one-year deal and got excellent results. This year he signed Brandon Morrow to a two-year deal and Morrow has been excellent so far.
A big payout to anybody jeopardizes keeping other players. There are only so many slices in the pie. We're lucky that with the Red Sox it's a pretty big pie.
Sometimes managers just flat out mess up. They make mistakes. They're human just like the players. They have an error rate. Sometimes they will even admit later they made a mistake. It's understandable. There are a lot of details to keep track of especially now with all the information being disseminated.
It's a very strange time to be bashing Holt. He has a .920 OPS and he had some big hits the last few games before going on the DL.
He has an fWAR of 0.5 in 16 games, so he has already earned $4 million on FanGraphs dollars and is making about $2 million this year.
Red Sox postseason history would suggest that a great closer was a difference-maker. Foulke in 04, Papelbon in 07, Koji in 13. Vs. Schiraldi in 86, and the Committee that Grady didn't trust in 03.