I have mentioned extending Pivetta, even before his resurgence last year and this year.
It might be more costly, now, but I could see it happening. His stint on the IL is concerning, and I don't trust Sox docs to judge the likelihood of further injury, but every pitcher, these days, is a dice roll on injury.
I'm not expecting a major rotation addition, but losing Jansen ($16M), Pivetta ($7.5M and Martin ($7.5M) does allow us to add a SP'er and still cut spending, again for 2025.
Replacing O'Neill's $5.9M with another equally costly RHB DH/OF-1B type should not be too hard.
We don't have big arb raises pending.
Arb 3: McGuire & Joely
Arb 2: none
Arb 1: Houck, Crawford, Duran will get significant raises, but first arb years are not usually all that big. (also, Dalbec, Reyes & Heinemena are ARB 1s)
IMO, we can spend the exact same as this year and use the $38M on departing FAs to pay for arb raises and a decent SP'er in the $14-20M range. If we look at this year's success or semi-success stories (so far), it could be someone like:
Lugo $15M x 4
Imanaga $13.3M x 5
Stroman $18.5M x 2
Wacah $16M x 2
Manaea $14M x 2
R Lopez $10M x 3
Flaherty $14M x 1
Next year's crop has some that will be out of JH's price range, but here is one list I found:
Burnes
Fried
Flaherty
Pivetta
Lorenzen
Scherzer
Beiber
Corbin
Morton
Stripling
Heaney
Kikuchi