The Yankees acquisition of Heaney has to make Red Sox fans feel a little better about Bloom not just grabbing some random starter for the sake of making a move.
Alex Speier wrote a good article about this stuff a year or two ago. He pointed out that there are now other financial penalties for going over the threshold. There's a clawback of revenue-sharing money that can add up to millions too. Plus there are some non-financial penalties. You'd really have to dive into the stuff to figure out all the costs.
Reminds me of the great line from Earl Weaver. Weaver said he didn't believe in team meetings, because if you have a meeting and go out and lose again, what do you do then?
And as stat nerds will tell you, he has been worth a solid 3.5-4.5 WAR a season over his career. His defensive metrics are not very good, but his offensive metrics are excellent.
Pretty hard to argue with the early returns on Rizzo. Yes, I know it's only 3 games. But he seems like a perfect fit there. I think he's going to put up good numbers.