Honestly, I couldn't be further away from this viewpoint. If a team I rooted for lost a year of cost controlled production of a potential MVP caliber player because they called him up in April instead of June, I'd be apoplectic. The odds that two months of a rookie is worth that lost year, that those two months add more to their playoff chances than a full year of in their prime production, is an absurdity. Management that makes those kind of short sighted decisions is exactly the kind of management that leads to things like losing that franchise player, because you've been too busy talking yourselves into building the team of today to pay attention to your ability to field the team of tomorrow. I root for the team, I root for the laundry, and the players that wear it are just a bonus. It'd be nice to have had Mookie longer, but he showed no desire to stay with the Red Sox. Extensions were offered. There has been absolutely no pushback from Mookie's camp to indicate he gave a reasonable counter offer, and everything he has said indicates he has always planned to go to free agency and get the most money possible, whether that's because of what he sees as his role in the MLBPA or because he just wants to get paid. He wants free agency, he wants the money, and the team what was best for the team, and I root for the Red Sox, not Team Mookie.
Last point, this is not a "bad return". This is not "role players". That is a horseshit take. Verdugo put up over 2 WAR in just over 100 games. As a rookie. Graterol is immediately the best prospect in the Red Sox system, and the team's best hope for a young, high level starter to supplement and replace our veteran arms. That is frankly a better return than I expected, and Graterol is not even a guy who fits the mold of what I typically like in a pitching prospect (for whatever reason, I care a lot about a pitching prospect's changeup, and that's his worst pitch; I guess it was watching Pedro as a kid...and I don't regret them not retaining him after 2004, even though he's my favorite player to ever put on the uniform). I want my team to win titles, win games, and keep players I like, but only in that order. Flags fly forever.