Anyone who follows baseball has known for months that the 2014 version of the Boston Red Sox is a clunker. As the Red Sox fan base licks it’s wounds, as Ben Cherington turns 2 months of John Lester into 1 year and 2 months of Yoenis Cespedes, as the Astros
become a handful, and as Xander Bogaerts hits like Jackie Bradley, Jr., it becomes time to begin to transition from peeking toward 2015 to simply longing for it.
Ironically, there is one more bit of business that the 2014 version of the Red Sox can do in order to assist the 2015 version of the Red Sox: keep losing. In the current Collective Bargaining Agreement, teams with the 10 worst records in a given season have their 1st
Round Draft pick protected in the following season were the team to delve into the Free Agent market. (With the Brady Aiken debacle in Houston, the first 11 picks are protected in the 2015 draft, which basically means the Red Sox do not need to fall into the bottom 9 in order keep their pick protected).
Currently, the Red Sox have the 10th worst record in MLB (56-68, .452 winning percentage). This puts them squarely on the border of risking their first round pick in the coming season were they sign a free agent who had declined the [roughly $14-15 million]
qualifying offer from their current team.
Now, Jon Lester is famously not subject to this having been traded. Were the Red Sox to sign him – and it still seems fairly unlikely to happen if we are honest – it would only cost them money, not any draft picks.
Max Scherzer is a prime example of a player who will have declined a qualifying offer and will be a free agent. While he would look good in a Red Sox uniform, the fact that he has already celebrated his 30th birthday and will likely sign for upwards of $150 million is likely all the clue we need as to whether or not he will be a Red Sox player.
Pablo Sandoval Gnome wants to play in Boston. Credit elwetritsche via flickr.
The player that seems most likely to have an offer extended to him by the Red Sox is Pablo Sandoval. Like him or not, and it seems many do not, he is a power bat in a tough ball park with a career .347 OBP. He has had a solid season at third base in 2014, in spite
of what is pretty clearly a bad body. But more importantly than all of that: he just celebrated his 28th birthday last week. A 6 year contract would likely cover Sandoval’s prime, expiring shortly after his 34th birthday.
Will the Red Sox sign Sandoval? Would he even be interested? If there is anything that we know, it is that this Red Sox regime is unpredictable, even in their dogmatism. But, even if the Red Sox are not interested in Sandoval, in order for them to have maximum
flexibility in the 2015 off season, they need to keep losing. One more winning streak and that first round pick is no longer protected.