sk7326

A forward looking idea could be to look into the trade market for Bogaerts THIS offseason ... he is a good player, possibly very good. I am bullish - but with his FA being a year before Betts and Bradley ... if you think you can staff SS adequately, and get a large haul back, I can understand that.

the strawman is strong in this one - so let me rephrase The Red Sox have carried a large payroll - as they should. They have largely managed it well. Letting Betts walk at the age of 27 would not be a good use of payroll - and if you cite the tax as a reason not to make THAT decision, it is bad management. It is fair game for lots of other decisions. (8 figure closers, cough cough)

Nunez is there to swing the bat - so far it has been good. His versatility is super helpful - he is kind of poor defensively wherever he plays, but as a supersub, it's fine.

I know the deterrents. The draft pick deterrent is small if the team is good. The difference between 28 and 38 is small. That the team has to make choices on players is self evident. These decisions are ultimately business case ones - can the team carry lots of tax ... sure, if there is the requisite revenue bumps to go with it. Certainly the Red Sox marginal product per win is high ... certainly paying the tax to field a 75 win team is absurd. To field a 95 win one in a very high revenue market is a different deal.

I am not advocating for anything stupid baseball-wise. But for a team like Boston, it can be the cost of doing business. And - re-signing young stars is a good use of that money. The draft deterrent is significant - although how significant is tricky - since if the team itself is not actually bad, the marginal impact is smallish. The main deterrent is financial ... and I am for the most part very skeptical of a high revenue team whining about this, especially when the team is an actual contender.

Nunez is definitely one of those "hot craps roller" sort of hitters ... he's up there to swing ... but if he is squaring it up, hooray, ride it as long as possible. Add his ability to play a ton of positions (granted, all of them pretty badly) and he is very helpful in 12-13 man pitching staff baseball.

It wouldn't QUITE be like that ... because the lineup wraps around. There are two things to balance with a lineup ... 1. You want your best hitters coming up as often as possible 2. You want your best hitters coming up with lots of run creation opportunities You bat your top OPS guy 1st ... you get #1, but at the expense of #2. Batting your best hitter 2nd (I need to find the book where the study is from) - by a small margin (all the margins are small) - is the best way to balance the two.

It's baseball - no reason not to be optimistic. Even the worst team in the league pulled off an 11-8 stretch during the season. Get in the tournament, see what happens.

If the bus passes by a World Series stop or two yippee

It is because ownership did not WANT to pay the tax - which is their prerogative. But it is their CHOICE - because they want to take some profits ... which is fine. This is America, after all. By calling it a cap - you are buying into the idea that management's hands are tied by the rules, which of course is nonsense. As a grownup who realizes that Sox fans pay the highest prices for just about everything (maybe behind Yankees fans in some areas - I am not looking this up), I have no problem questioning ownership's priorities if this is the case.

Because there is no cap

Yes they can ... they might not want to (Sale in particular) ... team doesn't have the most expensive everything for nothin

Nothing easier to replace than a 24 year old top ten player

5th in all of baseball by bWAR, 8th in fWAR. Down-ish offensive year ... best outfielder by a Secretariat-esque margin. It's a really good year - enough to be on the AL MVP podium ...

The Red Sox are a mint - 3rd in the league in revenue - all of this is a choice. There is no cap - and given this team's resources we should not be okay with the team acting like there is one. This is not a justification for management being stupid - but letting prime players walk - actual good investments - out of some sense of a cap which doesn't exist.

This is largely true - except for one problem here. USUALLY, when you make the decision to "go all out to sign superstars" - you are talking about FAs, which usually means 30 year olds and the like. The decision is almost always enough early value to justify a contract with decline in it. If you develop well - like the Sox have - and you have a 24 year old MVP-level performer - things are different ... a 10-year deal is not super smart - but there is no reason not to go all out to try to sign a kid who is young enough that you will be getting almost all prime years in the contract.

You have to be realistic on some level - we're asking Betts to never put himself on the open market ever - which is wildly unrealistic. It would run counter to anybody's wish in any part of their career. If he's going to give up his free agency, then he has to be paid up front for it. Now how much of a raise should be get on his arb figures - because any such contract would require one. So let's say 3/75 for the arb years ... and then 3/100 for the free agency years - and that gets you to $185M (I did not do the math seriously in the 200). It's a deal which can manage risk for both parties. I don't worry about Betts' last 4 years as much either - but I don't see why he'd ever want to give them up, especially given he'll probably be able to get a ton from somebody by then. As I have noted - I have zero interest in the luxury tax hit. There are ways to control for that - and if that is going to drive Judge Smails, er, ownership's thinking ... after monetizing every square inch of the Nation - he is in the wrong business. It's a budgetary choice (he is eating well either way).

Oh sure - but then again, Bradley is 8th in the majors in DRS - which is pretty good ... Lorenzo Cain territory, but other guys have had better seasons. Betts by any metric has been the dominant defensive outfielder in the league.

Salaries rise a lot faster than locking 10/275 would do.

A 6 year, 200 million deal that gobbles up his arb years is sensible for both sides - buys some of his free agency, gives him a ton of security and huge raises in his arb years ... and gets him back into FA by age 30 where he can probably secure another monster contract.

To be fair - it was charming when Manny did it. There is stuff to tighten up. Better fixing that stuff than the bat being afraid of breaking stuff.

A down year that has him 5th in the world in bWAR.

The Red Sox have a Top 5 CF playing to Bradley's left right now. It will be hard to find a RF as good as Betts defensively, but it is possible to find a quality bat there.

This is fair - and the Red Sox also have a probable Top 5 center fielder playing directly to Bradley's left. He has always been a movable commodity for that reason - quality starting CFs are hard to find and the Red Sox have two.

He is a rookie who was in AA this time a year ago ... it is amazing how easy it is to forget this. He hasn't broken out yet - waaaaahhh ... of course he has work to do. He has had a good rookie season. It's not as good as his callup last season - but plenty good to say "he could be a keeper"