Red Sox Talk: Edwin Encarnación Should Have Been Priority

Boston Red Sox Talk: Edwin Encarnación Should Have Been Priority For Team But Ownership Cheaped Out And Cut Salary

Edwin Encarnación was the offensive prize this offseason in major league baseball. Since 2012, his lowest homerun output was 34. Having him in your lineup instantly makes your team better because he is such a stud at the plate.

After an offseason where it seemed like the market for him was inexistent, he finally signed Thursday night with the Cleveland Indians on a 3 year, $60 million dollar contract (or a max of 4 year, $80 million), making them not only guaranteed AL Central winners but I’d put them ahead of the Boston Red Sox in winning the American League.

To begin with, the Cleveland Indians rotation will be better with a healthy Carlos Carrasco in 2017 and Edwin Encarnación being a major upgrade of Mike Napoli, they are geared to make a deep run into October.

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Don’t get me wrong, the Red Sox still have a pretty good shot at making it to the World Series but there is no reason Edwin Encarnación shouldn’t be on the Boston Red Sox right now. To begin with, he signed an extremely reasonable contract that the Red Sox would have been willing to do based off of past reports.

As you know, they recently traded Clay Buchholz to free up $13.5 million dollars of cap space and to get under the luxury tax line. They also signed the gold glove version of Travis Shaw in Mitch Moreland for $5 million as their 1^st basemen to go along with Hanley Ramirez.

In Boston, we don’t like when they don’t spend money. Yes it can get you into trouble when you sign free agents to a lot of money when they’re in their 30’s but for the price that Encarnación signed for, you would be fine. Especially since David Ortiz said that he’d like to see him come to Boston.

Yes, you will get more offense in left field next year with Andrew Benintendi and you’re assuming more offense at 3^rd base with Pablo Sandoval but even that’s not guaranteed. Either way, with the loss of David Ortiz, this offense is a lot worse than it was a year ago. Encarnación would have made it better than a year ago.

I would have been fine with not signing Encarnación but at the price he signed at, he should be in Boston, no if’s, and’s, or but’s about it. The rotation might be better but they are not in nearly as a good place as they were a year ago and Encarnación would have made them by far, World Series favorites.

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To make things worse, the reason it seems they didn’t sign him was because of the luxury tax line. Something we don’t want to hear in Boston. Another thing I don’t want to hear is Sam Travis. He’s coming off an ACL injury. You don’t know what he’ll end up being.