Betts deal only gets worse
Penny pinching Sox lie to save face
Sadly, the Everglades are infested with Burmese pythons, a population explosion that largely can be traced to knuckleheads growing tired of having them as pets and releasing them in the wetlands, where no natural predators await the coiling killers.
I would sooner buy a slice of that swampland than the spin being sold to the north in Florida by the Red Sox about their decision to trade Mookie Betts, a superstar in his prime.
Dealing Betts and David Price (and half of his salary) enabled the Red Sox payroll to slip under the $208 luxury tax threshold, which allowed them to reset to the lowest penalty level once they go back over the soft salary cap next year, instead of paying a 62% tax on the overage amount.
It obviously was the motirecord vation for the foolish trade.
Yet, in his first meeting with reporters this spring, Bloom said: “The CBT was not a major factor in us deciding to do this deal, as much as it was a goal for us this offseason.”
They’re intertwined, obviously, but beyond that it’s interesting to hear Bloom confirm that getting under the threshold was a goal, which is consistent with what owner John Henry said in a Sept. 27 meeting with reporters: “This year we need to be under the CBT. That is something that we’ve known for more than a year now.”
Three and a half months later, Henry went on the as saying that getting under the CBT was more a focus of the media than of the Red Sox. Silly media, taking the owner at his Sept. 27 word. Let’s revisit Henry’s second sentence: “That is something that we’ve known for more than a year now.”
Don’t doubt that for a second. They knew the rules, knew how punitive going over the threshold again was going to be, which of course begs an obvious question: Why sign Nathan Eovaldi to a contract that pays him $17 million per year and Chris Sale to one that pays him $29 million per? Why are pitchers at risk of injury more important to the Red Sox than keeping one of the top handful of players in baseball?
It simply doesn’t add up. Did Boston already know when they signed Eovaldi and then months later Sale that they had no intention of making Mookie a member of the Red Sox for life?
Other recent baseball news makes the Mookie trade even tougher to stomach. As first reported by Joel Sherman of the New York Post, Major League Baseball is pondering expanding the playoffs from five teams per league to seven and expanding the wild-card round from one game to a best-ofthree series, as soon as 2022. The plan calls for a TV show that would feature the teams with the top two records from each league choosing their first-round opponents. Who wouldn’t watch that show, which would draw top advertising dollars? The extra revenue from that wrinkle and from other sources since the last Basic Agreement between the owners and players was hatched no doubt would lead to the luxury tax thresholds going way higher in the next Basic Agreement. The current deal expires at the end of the 2021 season.
So all the Red Sox had to do was pay the luxury tax this year, an estimated $17 million, and if unable to get under the 2021 threshold of $210 million, again next year. The following year, the threshold likely will be much higher, so it would have been no problem from 2022 on to keep Mookie and not get hammered by taxes.
Watching the Red Sox operate so impulsively, wildly shifting fiscal policy from year to year, calls to mind riding shotgun to someone learning to drive. Way too heavy on the gas pedal, followed by way too heavy on thebrake.
Where is the consistency? Oh well, at least a little good news came out of Red Sox camp Tuesday.
Ron Roenicke’s elevation to manager confirms that the MLB investigation, if that’s not too strong a word, didn’t uncover anything that will damage the Sox, who wouldn’t have promoted Roenicke if there was a chance he could be exposed in the scandal.
So why “interim” in front of “manager”? Maybe to make it look as if they don’t already know the outcome of the “investigation.” Better idea: Quit worrying about appearances and give the guy the added authority in the clubhouse that removing “interim” would give him.
Roenicke’s a good baseball man. If encouraged to write his own lineup card and given control over how much data pitchers have access to (too much is a bad thing), he figures to do as fine a job as can be expected with a roster so dangerously thin on starting pitching, a roster stripped of Mookie Betts’ bat, speed, glove, hustle and leadership.
Roenicke proved during his four-plus seasons as manageroftheBrewersthat he knows how to steer a ship. It’s too bad the Red Sox plopped a massive iceberg right in front of him by dealing Betts and Price.