Bone Chips said:
Yeah, but the ownership group also got burnt on player spending and has given strong indications the last year that they have changed their strategy pretty drastically moving forward. And by that I mean - no longer a player in the top-tier free agent market. When your stated strategy is that you don't want to give out long-term contracts to players over 30, well that pretty much says you are no longer going to compete for top-tier players anymore. Free agents are basically all over 30, and the ones with any high value are going to demand deals of 4 years or longer. They are not even showing a willingness to do what is necessary to retain free agents that have grown up through their system (Ellsbury and Lester). So we can look to their past track record all we want, but it's what they are doing now and in the future that has me concerned.
I don't think the Red Sox are going to morph into a $100 million payroll team, and I'm sure P91 doesn't either. But I am having a hard time reconciling all the pieces in their overall strategy in such a way that you can have a $170 million payroll with this team going forward. How many $10 million a year free agents can you add to their roster? They are loaded with low cost young players that making the bare minimum. It seems like the perfect strategy for such a team in this poisition is to target a couple top-tier free agents at this time - not avoid them.
Not the best ones. When would Stanton reach FA? Justin Upton? Kershaw? Heyward? (Bogaerts?)
26-29, if ever. It's possible that the tier of players you're describing isn't actually the top tier.