$270 million is a lot of money.
When you own a business, and you owe $270 million to employees who are worth nowhere near that number, you’re probably in trouble.
That’s the situation the Boston Red Sox found themselves in 15 months ago, owing a king’s ransom to Adrian Gonzalez, a good but not great first baseman, Carl Crawford, a mediocre, speed-dependent left fielder and Josh Beckett, a former ace who has failed to produce of late and is quite injury prone.
All of those players used to be great, but were on the decline and were due to receive a boatload of cash. Ridding the books of any those contracts would have been a victory. Dropping all three was sorcery.
That’s why last season’s blockbuster trade with the Dodgers should go down as one of the best front-office moves in baseball history.
Not only did the Red Sox free up a ridiculous amount of cash, they were able to cleanse themselves of three players who had become symbols of the excess and malaise for which the team had become known.
Part of the cash saved in the trade then went into extensions for Dustin Pedroia and David Ortiz, as well as free agent contracts for Shane Victorino, Mike Napoli, Jonny Gomes, Koji Uehara, Stephen Drew, and David Ross.
All of these players were integral to the Red Sox success this season, and accounted for pretty much every big moment Boston had in the playoffs. A team shouldn’t be able pull that off, but thanks to the gargantuan resources and shift in ownership of the Dodgers, the Red Sox were able to find a team with the resources to take on the contract and the desperation for viewers to value these “stars” as necessary for the team’s image.
However, this isn’t to say the Dodgers made a bad trade. Trades aren’t a zero-sum game; both teams can win. The Red Sox just happened to register a much bigger win.
The biggest mystery of baseball’s offseason is the true depth of the Dodgers money pit.
If the Dodgers are willing to support a $400 million payroll (and their ludicrous $6 billion television contract says they are), then it is perfectly okay to acquire okay-to-good players for premium money. It won’t be financially efficient, but there’s no such thing as an Efficiency World Series.
That being said, the Dodgers are alone atop the MLB money tree, meaning any success the Dodgers experience won’t teach us much beyond the lesson that money is a good thing to have.
So what should we take from this? First of all, it’s time to recognize a growing trend in baseball: Big money free agents are a dying breed. As we’ve learned from Adrian Gonzalez, Albert Pujols, and soon, Robinson Canó, promising half of your payroll obligations to one player over 30 is a bad idea.
When a team signs a big free agent, it will most likely experience the winner’s curse. When a team values a free agent more than any other team in baseball, it has most likely overvalued that free agent. Unless that team is either the Yankees or the Dodgers, signing that player to a ludicrous amount of money will most likely cripple the team for years.
The Red Sox instead decided to spread the money around, using free agency to fill holes with low-risk players.
Boston built this year’s world series on a strong homegrown core and one of the best farm systems in baseball.
Look around the playoffs and you’ll see teams that mirror this. The Cardinals, the Athletics, the Rays, the Reds, the Pirates, the Indians and the Rangers all got to where they are today by developing their own players and riding them to the playoffs, using free agency as a support, not an engine. The best team money can buy is no longer that great of a team.
Conservative free agency and a commitment to home-grown players has become the cheapest and most effective way to consistently compete in the league.
Does the Red Sox’ front office deserve as much credit as it has reveived for this year’s World Series victory? Email jfbaer@wisc.edu to let him know what you think.
