Reportedly runners-up to the Red Sox, the Cardinals now face an expensive, even overpriced, free-agent market. Saving money in the future allowed them to spend now.
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For a lot of Red Sox fans, that’s enough. The Mets won their first division title since 2006, but fell in the World Series to the Royals. That’s all that matters. It also happens to be the final year of arbitration for Xander Bogaerts – Bogaerts will need a significant pay raise to stick around either through a pre-free agency extension or on free agency at the same time that Boston’s obligations all but vanish, relatively speaking. While the Red Sox have shied away from large contracts the last few seasons, this one was different.
Alderson’s team had its most successful season in more than a decade. The 30-year-old has a 25-21 career record with a 3.87 ERA.
The Cubs already have earmarked about $73.75 million to eight players for 2016, and tendering contracts to all nine arbitration-eligible players could cost them an additional $34 million.
Handing out gargantuan contracts makes things harder.
The Red Sox were in dire need of pitching and they were said to be gunning for Price to fill that need. Could Dexter Fowler be re-signed now that the money will not all go to Price?
And Dombrowski didn’t surrender substantial prospects in a trade for Craig Kimbrel so that he could wait a year or two to contend. Teams don’t trade for closers unless they have a win-now game plan. “But when you go to the Winter Meetings, you can never tell what happens”.
The entire offseason revolved around whether or not Don Dombrowski was able to land an ace for the Red Sox. Something doesn’t quite add up, and it’s very possible that this signing was over Dombrowski’s head and came by direct order from Red Sox owner John Henry. But even the colossal failures, the numbers weren’t like this. Darren O’ Day, a shutdown reliever, would cost around four years, $28 million and could join Koji Uehara and Junichi Tazawa to form a powerful back end of the bullpen. That contract seems downright pedestrian now.
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The speculation and rumors of David Price reuniting with front office executive Dave Dombrowski are all but official. It may be a smart one, but if it doesn’t pan out, he hasn’t left himself with many options to get out.
