Boston Red Sox free agency strategy hurt by new universal DH rule

Boston Red Sox poor offseason moves punctuate the offseason

The perfectly awful trade of Hunter Renfroe to the Milwaukee Brewers for the weak-hitting (.163 average in 2021), great-fielding Jackie Bradley Jr., his $12M salary, and two prospects was another gaffe that made almost no sense whatsoever.

Then, rather than sign a top starting pitched like Marcus Stroman for a reasonable deal for even maybe two years, Bloom rolled the dice on three questionable pitchers to the tune of about $22M.

These pitchers are James Paxton, who will miss part of 2022, Michael Wacha, another reclamation project, and, the best of the bunch, Rich Hill.

Then to bring back Bradley, who had a lousy season in 2021 to say the least (and who the Boston Red Sox and Bloom had chosen not to re-sign the offseason before), is mind-bogglingly bizarre at best and ludicrous at worst.

Sending out Renfroe in the process, who was one of Bloom’s best moves in his short Red Sox tenure, further exacerbated the negative aspects of that truly counter-productive trade.

Hopefully, the Boston Red Sox will come to their senses and re-sign Schwarber. They should also sign star Japanese outfielder Seiya Suzuki of the Hiroshima Toyo Carp to strengthen the club for the future as well.

The Red Sox weakened their offense significantly by shipping Renfroe out. They then signed the three-headed starting pitching group for a sum that could have landed a top starter with an additional few million. That’s another head-scratcher.

And again, bringing in a .163 hitter with a $12M salary to boot (when ostensibly they are in an austerity mode) is simply horrendous deal-making, prospects or no prospects.

What they have done to date has simply made the team worse. There may still be time to remedy this perfectly abysmal offseason to date. We’ll wait to see what they do when/if the lockout ends.