Nick

Our raises are going to be significant, starting with picking up Sale's option. Look at our arbitration eligible guys. This is right up your alley.

I think we can field a very highly competitive team over the next two years by just going over the luxury tax limit by $19.9M and no more. Once we reach 2020, we'll likely be at the 50% tax bracket with some big financial decisions to be made. With a much more difficult system for rich teams to rebuild their farms, I'm guessing we hit some hard times by 2021. If Henry didn't go nutty after 3 last place finishes, I doubt he will after a nice 4 year stretch (2016-2019). According to my numbers, we don't even have $20M, more like $15M.

Then why didn't we just sign a big bat this year? All the talk about resetting the penalty rate was for naught? You are not serious.

2018 We'll have $130M tied up to 7 players, one of which will be playing for the Giants. Price,Sale and Porcello, Kimbrel, Pedroia, Hanley. Throw in another $16M for benefits and player salary for 15 outside of 25 major leaguers. Cap is $197M and we have approximately $50M left to field following positions. C Leon (arb 1 = $1.3M) arb 2 estimate $2.5M C Vazquez (league min $561K) arb 1 estimate $1.5M 1B Travis (league min) say $1M SS Xander (arb 1 = $4.5M) arb estimate $7M 3B Devers (league minimum) say $1M LF Beni (league min) say $1M CF JBJ (arb 1 = $3.6M) arb 2 estimate $7.5M RF Betts ($950K) arb 1 estimate $7.5M Say you go cheap with 3 non arbitration players coming off the bench $3M That's $32M .. We have $18M left for two starters and 6 bullpen arms. Two remaining starters, Pom and E Rod will be in their last and first arbitration years. (one of four for E Rod) Pom (arb 2 = $4.45M) Arb 3 estimate $8M E Rod (league minimum) Arb 1 estimate $4M Now we have $6M left for following arms Joe Kelly (arb 2 = $2.8M) arb 3 estimate $4M Matt Barnes (league min) estimate $1M Heath Hembree (league min) estimate $1M Brandon Workman ($635K) arb 2 estimate $2M Carson Smith (leauge min) arb 1 estimate $1M Tyler Thornburg (arb 1 = $2.05M) arb 2 est $2M That's total of $11M, we are over the cap by $5M, And this is without adding big bat at 1B. Moon, even going over by $20M as we've talked about, there's not much money left. f***ING PABLO. $19M DEAD MONEY. Tell me again how we're going to extend Betts for $500M over 10 years?

Is Nunez going to cost more than Young did in FA market? Sure love to have him back as a super sub. With Pedroia, Hanley, Beni and Xander, he would almost be a full time player.

Sale, Kimbrel, Nunez and Pom....now they are nice pickups by DD. We'll see what Carson Smith hype is all about. He's under team control for next three years, 2018-2020.

Can we afford to pay Sale $50M, Betts $50M, Price $31M? And that will be Deves 3rd arb year. Who knows what that will cost. No worries, Henry has tons of money, right BsTHcpr?

Is that you, Bernie?

Betts is not having a MVP year.

As i responded to other poster, we are already paying Price $31M per year for additional 5 years. There has to be a limit to how many 'big splash' we can afford. There's a difference between Henry's money and Red Sox money. Henry is willing to spend Sox money (generated from baseball revenue) but Henry is unwilling to spend Henry's money. Sox has a budget. Not sure if they have 'surplus' but one thing Henry won't do is to make additional cash infusion to Sox.

Let's see if ANY team can pay that much and field a competitive team. UNLESS THERE'S A HUGH INFLATION WE ARE CLOSE TO MAXING OUT ON BOTH GATE AND TV REVENUE. LOOK AT NESN VIEWERSHIP AS ONE EXAMPLE.

You have no overall salary structure plan.....give me your 25 man roster and see if you can fit it under $220M....then I can take you seriously about offering one player 25% of the cap. We are already paying one player $31M per year.

Lets see if the Nationals can field a competitive team with paying one player 25% of the cap money.

Yep... My point ultimately is that other teams have good players. It's not as thought we have the market cornered. Take a deep breath. Our record is pretty much the same as last year at this time. Do we miss Papi? yep. But we seem to be doing ok, especially since they gave in and grudgingly promoted Devers.

I dont like long term contracts (4 years look about right).....i can even live with this being Dustin"s final year. Players r commodities. U can always buy another one.

i'm not convinced he's worth $275M over 10 years....

4 runs on 5 hits, 2 2 run homers. Value of Power.

Brock Holt with OPS of .554. He just sucks. Does not belong. And he bats 2nd. John, have you lost your mind?

We'll have Devers through 2023. We'll have Beni through 2022. We'll have Price through 2022. We'll have Pedroia throuh 2021. We'll have E Rod through 2021. I think we'll extend both Pom and Sale. $20M on Porcello will free up for 2020. Same goes for Hanley and Pablo, thus freeing up $60M between 3 players. Looks to me like we'll have money to spend. We should trade Xander and even Betts if they look to walk. (say with 2 years of control left)

Everyone here thought we needed upgrade from Shaw last year. Look at his splits. It's always easy to look back after the fact. WHO THE FREAK WOULD YOU RATHER HAVE? DEVERS OR SHAW? SHAW ARRIVED 4 MONTHS LATE, THAT'S ALL. Mistake was giving Pablass $95M contract. That certainly wasn't DD's fault.

If all the seats were filled with quality players, we would not have finished DEAD FREAKIN' LAST three out of four years. All of you doomsdayers conveniently IGNORE that fact. DD is one for one and has chance to go two for two. He's made bold moves. DD has filled the bus with true ace in Sale. DD was smart enough to keep Devers and trade away Moncada. Not both as requested by the White Sox. Kimbrel will have good three years on the bus as it cruises. The one that got off the bus is in the body shop. I'm good with DD driving the bus.

Bingo.....100% correct. Their hitting became an issue only because we've been inadequate at so many positions. DH, 1B, SS, 3B, LF, RF (too high of expectation?). Catching is least of our concern. This goes back to construction of team. Three years ago, we decided that we didn't need a true ace and went with Miley (32), Porcello (28), Kelly (25), Rodriquez (21), Buchholtz (18) and Owens (18). Clearly not a winning formula. We overestimated our offense for 2017. We projected betters years from several players who in fact had their best years. Our expectation was tad high. We need defense up the middle, C, SS, 2B and CF. Corner position must hit for high average or hit for power. You can't be a .260 singles hitter. As much as I appreciate Moreland relative to his contract, he's settled into the player he's always been. We are still in first place with Price and perhaps Carson Smith returning. We've added bullpen depth. It's incredible to me that our two new 'acquisitions' hit 3rd and 5th in our batting order last night. They've given us much needed lift. My guess for next year is that we'll have to live with Hanley and his $20M contract. Upgrading 1st base is a must. Hopefully that was the plan after we reset our penalty rate in 2017.

With the current salary cap structure, Sox will need to plug in a rookie every year. We can 'overpay' only to limited number of contracts. Price obviously was costly in terms of eating up much of luxury tax threashhold. We'll eat $19M next two years for Pablo. Just think what we could have done with that money. For one, we could have extended Pomeranz. Devers will give us cliff years 2020-2023. This is Beni's rookie year. He can give us cliff years 2020, 2021, 2022. Include Price in this group along with Barnes and Hembree. E Rod will give us cliff years 2020 and 2021 as well Dustin Pedroia. Betts, JBJ, Leon, C Smith and Vazquez will hang with us in cliff year 2020.

Bogaerts, Moreland, Vazquez and Bradley.....that looks to be strong bottom of batting order. Better than first two batting 3rd and 4th in the lineup.

Beni has all of us fooled. That cool demeanor actually is his DUMB look.