Boston Red Sox: 3 bad strategies that stifle team’s success

Second, the Boston Red Sox overpay mediocre players

Compounding the no-stars approach, the Sox have sought to replace them with older players for the most part who can’t possibly replace the star players they send packing.

Absent a masterful implementation of this strategy in 2021 when virtually all of Bloom’s trades and signings worked, he has flopped in the player management arena.

Bloom undid two of his best moves in 2021, signing Hunter Renfroe and trading for Kyle Schwarber. He evidently couldn’t stand prosperity so he jettisoned both in the offseason. Renfroe was traded to Milwaukee in a truly bizarre deal. He re-acquired weak-hitting former Red Sox cast-off Jackie Bradley Jr. and two of the so-valued, “prospects”.

Bloom traded one, didn’t sign the other, had Bradley at his whopping $17.5M salary for 2022 (and he was DFA’d), and also signed a Tommy John surgery-recovering pitcher, James Paxton for $10M for two years. He never threw a pitch in 2022 for $6M.

Aggregate the money spent on Bradley, Paxton, and a couple of other mediocre MLB retreads, and voila, there’s the salary plus for Schwarber, who led the National League with 46 home runs, and probably Renfroe too.