ORLANDO, Fla. – On the final day of the 2024 MLB Winter Meetings, the Boston Red Sox salvaged a week that saw them lose out on Juan Soto and Max Fried by pulling off a blockbuster trade for Garrett Crochet.
No such face-saving coup this year.
The Red Sox, interested in practically everyone, won no one. Having lost out on Kyle Schwarber and Pete Alonso, they flew home empty-handed.
It’s the same old song and dance in every free agency now. They’re urgent. They’re aggressive. They’re committed. They’re ‘full throttle.’
And then the Red Sox are none of those things – or not enough, at least – and someone else gets the prize.
Remember how it used to be? If the Red Sox wanted someone, boom. Welcome to the Red Sox. They made Boston the ultimate free agency destination by spending, contending, and winning more championships than any other franchise this century.
Let’s, for a moment, suspend the reality that several of their blockbuster additions didn’t pan out (Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford, Pablo Sandoval). The point is that the Red Sox made them in the first place. If they saw a chance to make the team better, they took it, risks and costs be darned.
Now, the Red Sox are governed by excuses; a free agent is too expensive, too old, or too injury-prone. They come off as overly-cautious and simultaneously confident that it’s acceptable to be one of baseball’s biggest-market teams and most storied franchises and continue to fail to come through. They are behaving like someone who promises to do a Polar Plunge, then refuses to go deeper than dipping their toes in the frigid water and pats themself on the back for making a half-hearted attempt.
Whether this is truly how Red Sox leadership feels is, to some extent, beside the point. How they are perceived in the baseball universe impacts how they fare with free agents. The outside perception is that the Red Sox are OK with finishing these free agency races as also-rans. One free agent told the Herald it was “beyond confusing” to see how they operate. A league source said the Red Sox had totally tipped their hand, and were now at the mercy of Scott Boras, agent extraordinaire to Alex Bregman, among other stars.
The Red Sox desperately need a right-handed power hitter in their lineup. On Wednesday, in the hours after Alonso’s deal became public, chief baseball officer Craig Breslow acknowledged, “The profile that I’ve talked about wanting to add is certainly one he would fit.”
Yet days after Alonso’s 31st birthday on Dec. 7, the Red Sox were unwilling to offer him a five-year contract through his age-36 season, because they were concerned about his decline by the end. What that suggests about their pursuit of Alex Bregman, a player at a far more strenuous defensive position, who turns 32 in March, is not promising.
More than ever there’s an element of irresponsibility required to make something tremendous happen in a competitive environment. There’s little rationale in giving anyone a 10-year contract to do anything, and nobody needs $300 million dollars. And rarely, if ever, can a superstar still play like a superstar when he’s 40 years old and in that ninth season of such a contract.
Those twilight years are the cost of getting a player in his prime. Teams unwilling to pay get nothing, and often win nothing as a result. And the longer it goes on, the more difficult it becomes to change such a reputation. It speaks volumes that the Orioles, who had one contract in excess of $100 million in their franchise history, outbid them for Alonso, but the Red Sox have sat back and letting teams to outspend them for several years now.
Today, only one of the current 24 richest contracts in MLB history ever belonged to Boston, and the San Francisco Giants are now footing the remaining nine years of Rafael Devers’ 10-year extension.
The Red Sox must get comfortable with being uncomfortable in free agency now. It’s something they haven’t truly done in a long time; every big free agent commitment they have made since winning the 2018 World Series – and there haven’t been many – has come with an escape hatch of some sort. The Red Sox signed Trevor Story in March ‘22 thinking Xander Bogaerts would either take a hometown discount or leave for greener pastures.
Masataka Yoshida’s contract the following December was a sizable overpay, but sometimes players from the other leagues have a difficult time acclimating to MLB. At the end, the Red Sox can shrug and say, “We tried.”
Bregman practically fell into their laps after pitchers and catchers had already reported to spring training last February, and the Red Sox gave him a three-year contract that, while highly lucrative, he would almost certainly opt out of within a year or two.
These contracts weren’t particularly uncomfortable at the time of agreement. None were in excess of six seasons, nor did they come after consecutive seasons over the luxury tax threshold. Their last truly uncomfortable free-agent signing was arguably David Price’s then-record for a pitcher: seven years, $217 million in 2015. It seems almost affordable by today’s standards. And it remains their largest and longest free-agent commitment to date.
Breslow deserves a lot of credit for overhauling Red Sox pitching development, the Crochet trade, and extensions for him and young homegrown stars like Brayan Bello and Roman Anthony. But no amount of blockbuster trades will change the perception that the Red Sox are no longer willing to be aggressive with financial commitments on the free agent market, and those extensions will be money wasted if the front office is unwilling to bring in what’s missing.
Spring training is still two months away. The Red Sox don’t have the benefit of the doubt, but they still have time.
But if they keep waiting for a perfect, moderately-affordable superstar free agent to come along, they will probably be waiting forever.
