I don't know where this entry should be put, but since you bring up the $30 million risk on Sale, it reminds me of a thought about long term planning of the team's finances and how it will work with the long term contracts that we currently have on the books. In general, I foresee:
1. There will be some cap limit on spending going forward applied in an effort to keep a competitive balance between the large and small market teams. How it will be structured and how it may change will depend on player's union input at the next negotiations. The point is that there will be a limitation.
2. The Sox have some fairly near term contracts and some long term contracts that are meaningful. Price is a 2 year one, Price for 5, Bogie for 4 I believe, Pedroia winding down, Eovaldi and JDM.
3 The Sox will have to deal with JBJ, Betts and Porcello and E-Rod near term and have Beni and Devers who will begin to be paid. Devers is superstar material and money needs to be reserved to keep him.
4. We probably need new GM leadership as it appears to me that we have a predicament going forward and our current GM made the decisions to put us into the situation. We need to rebuild our farm system while trying to keep the seats filled until we can restructure our contracts going forward.
5. I would say few fans see how we can trade away the most damaging contracts we currently have, so the emphasis should be on not committing to additional long term ones that will not likely pay dividends for the team. Right now it looks like Porcello, JBJ and in a year, Betts will need to be dealt with. Others we just assume are gone with the exception of Leon and Holt, both of whom are questionable for the longer term. I'd expect Porcello and Jbj to be gone and an at value offer to be made for Betts. We'd be better with him but not at $30 mil for 10 years.
It will not be an easy time for the GM going forward. Lets hope we get a smart yet hard headed leader who considers the long term.