Originally Posted by
Nick
I liked your analysis of prioritizing current Sox players as they become FA.
I have as much fascination with Sale as I do with Betts. Here we have a player that clearly wants to be with Red Sox. I think he'll take an extension of say 6 year, $180M. I simply love his competitiveness on the mound. We gave up a lot for his three years of service, albeit team friendly contract.
I would love to keep Sale and JD Martinez and reset, if that's possible.
In reality, we have only 4 contracts for 2020. Price ($31M), Eovaldi ($17M), Pedroia ($13.75M) and Vaz ($4.52M) for total of $66.27M. 3 major arbitration players are Betts (say $22M), JBJ (say $11M) and E Rod ($8.50M). That brings total to 7 players at $108M. Add Sale at $30M and JD at $25M (front loaded) and now we have $163M committed to 9 players. Throw in $15M for benefits, with a luxury tax line of $208M, we have $30M to cover the cost of 31 roster players.
Gone are Xander, Pearce, Moreland, Nunez, Thornburg, Holt.
You'll have 15 players making league minimum of $550K. Say that's $8M. You now have $22M for Beni, Devers, Barnes, Brasier,.....basically 16 players for $22M, which is doable.
The team would still be competitive 2020.
SP Price, Sale, Eovaldi, E Rod, Wright, Johnson, Hector
BP Brasier, Barnes, etc
C Vaz
1B Chavis
2B Pedroia
SS Lin
3B Devers
LF Beni
CF JBJ
RF Betts
DH Martinez
You can trade Vaz for cheaper option. Delta for Betts is $13M more to get to magic $35M, going from arbitration #3 to FA.
We can blow through the budget for 2021 at 20% penalty and 2022 at 30% penalty. At the conclusion of 2022, Price's $31M will come off the books along with Pedey's $13.75M, which will have come off year earlier.
Again, goal is to win the world series.
Build a team around Beni, Betts, Devers, JBJ and Martinez. Throw in Price, Eovaldi, Sale and E Rod. Other teams have much less.