Renfroe was really good for the Red Sox this past year. Not perfect, obviously, and not even great, but really good. bWAR of 2.3, which is worth well north of the ~$7 million he was making. He's pretty inexpensive for what he provides. I know his playoffs weren't great but he was very solid for them.
It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if they didn't tender him but signed Schwarber, and moved Verdugo to RF and had Schwarber in left. I think they lose defensively in both places though, but Schwarber's bat is better than Renfroe's (despite Hunter's 31 hr and 112 ops+). Of course, that move is going to cost a lot more money, if money is a concern here.
He was making $3.1m this year; $7m and change is his projected arb award for
next year.
But again, I don't see many people proposing non-tendering Renfroe. Or rather — I should speak for myself —
I am suggesting that he is worth his salary but likely has little trade value, and, because I
am seeing a lot of posts proposing trading him for pitching, I am skeptical that he could return anything we actually want.
Because he had a 0 (or negative) WAR season in 2020, he's a tough projection going forward. If he is indeed a ~2 win player again for $7.6m or whatever it ends up being, that's tremendous. But he has a recent track record of being
much worse than that, which is how we got him for free. It was 2020; maybe it doesn't mean much. But even if people are willing to discount the pandemic season somewhat, that's not a profile that I'm sending a starting pitcher for if I'm another team's GM, especially with guys like Eddie Rosario, Joc Pederson, Avisaíl García, Tommy Pham, Odúbel Herrera, Corey Dickerson and Michael Conforto on the market, some of whom are likely to sign for less than Renfroe's arb award is likely to be, there are other options for teams (eyeballing it: the Guardians, Tigers, Mets, Royals, maybe a few others) looking to add outfielders.
A concrete example: Tommy Pham is likely a better player than Hunter Renfroe, right? Renfroe will be 30 in 2022, Pham will be 33. Both are so-so defenders in the outfield corners. Renfroe is likely to hit 25-35 HR while Pham is more a 15-25 guy in a healthy season, but Pham has a career OBP about 60 points higher than Renfroe. Pham was an "honorable mention" at the MLBTR top-50 FA list, meaning they thought he would sign a contract worth less than the 50th FA, whom they had at 1/$6m.
Maybe you could get a late inning reliever or something, but we're probably not getting a 4/5 starter by dealing Renfroe.