This year's tepid MLB stove season is dominated by talk of whether contending teams in Boston and Cleveland, both of which won their divisions in 2018 but missed the playoffs in 2019, might trade their best players -- Mookie Betts and Francisco Lindor, respectively -- now, before they reach free agency (next November for Betts and the following offseason for Lindor). Cleveland's financial picture is its own set of problems, but Boston should have no issue whatsoever paying Betts -- who seems to want to go to free agency -- $30-plus million a year to spend the rest of his prime years with the Red Sox. There is, however, an argument for trading Betts now to address the organizational deficiency in starting pitching, even though it would mean trading their best and perhaps most popular player.
The Red Sox are not in a great competitive position right now; their rotation for 2020 depends on two veterans, Chris Sale and David Price, whose health and durability are both gigantic questions. Neither threw 150 innings last season; both had the worst ERAs of their careers and both ended the year on the injured list. Their healthy returning starters are Eduardo Rodriguez and ... Nathan Eovaldi, if you are an optimist. The Red Sox had a 4.70 ERA last year, putting them at the league median, and would project to worse than that in 2020 unless they bring in a lot of outside help.
Their system is on the way back up after bottoming out in 2018, but there isn't a starting pitching prospect in their system likely to contribute in the major league rotation this year. Their two closest starter prospects, Tanner Houck and Bryan Mata, both show platoon splits and have delivery concerns that might lead them to the bullpen. Thad Ward is probably the prospect most likely to start, but he finished 2019 in high-A and likely won't see the majors until midsummer or later. Jay Groome and Noah Song might be starters in the long run, but both are further away, with Groome just back from Tommy John surgery and Song drafted out of the Naval Academy just this past June. Without a significant expenditure on players not currently in the organization, it's hard to imagine the Red Sox fielding a contender's rotation in the next three seasons.
That's the crux of the problem here: The Red Sox are a large-market team that could run just about any payroll they'd like, but they're operating as if their budget is limited. They're committed to more than $140 million for 2020, not including $25-30 million for Betts and an equivalent amount for other arbitration-eligible players on the roster. If they bring everyone back, they'll be close to $200 million -- again, they can afford this -- and would still be at least two quality starters short of a contending rotation, assuming they don't get 30 good starts from both Price and Sale. (Even so, it would be those two, Rodriguez and maybe Eovaldi, who was neither healthy nor effective as a starter last year.) They could field a tremendous offense this year with the players they already have but end up well below the league median in run prevention if Price and Sale pitch at or below their 2019 levels -- or just don't pitch at all.
This leaves the Red Sox with two paths forward:
They could try to spend their way into a few more years of contention, signing two top free-agent starters this winter for probably $40-50 million a year in total, or try to sign one and then trade for another starter with the prospects they do have. Free agency seems more likely for this strategy, as the crop of starters who might be available in trade because they're approaching free agency and with non-contenders is thin, with Mike Minor and Robbie Ray the only two who might be on the market who are also good enough to move the needle for Boston.
Their other strategy would be to accept non-contention for a year or two, given the strength of the Yankees and the Rays and the probability that the Blue Jays will keep improving as they rebuild, and use Betts to try to trade for long-term pitching help.
If they could get two pitchers who project to be important parts of the team's 2021-25 rotations, that would go a long way to justifying the deal. You can't argue that the team would ever be better off for losing Betts' 7 WAR a year, but you might argue that they're better off given who else they have in the organization, with two 3 WAR starters at the minimum salary for several years and the payroll left over from trading Betts to supplement the team somewhere else. If, completely hypothetically, they traded Betts to Atlanta for two of that team's stable of promising young starters, then used the savings to sign Zack Wheeler, they'd probably be better set up to contend in 2021 and beyond than if they kept Betts and didn't simultaneously address the rotation.
Again, this is all based on two assumptions. One is that the Red Sox can't support a payroll above the luxury tax threshold, which is a bit of fiction. The other is an assumption that even if they were willing to go above that mark they'd still be able to land the two top-end starters they'd need to contend in 2020, which I feel confident is a fair assessment given how many other teams should be bidding on the likes of Gerrit Cole, Stephen Strasburg, Wheeler and Hyun-Jin Ryu. The Red Sox are a high-revenue team that should consistently run one of the game's highest payrolls, and if they return to contention in 2021 or 2022 or some point beyond that, they should be in the market for the top free agents each year -- going after the next Mookie Betts to hit free agency, whenever that should be.
The Red Sox's self-imposed payroll crunch evaporates after the 2022 season, when the contracts they've given Price, J.D. Martinez and Eovaldi all run out, freeing up nearly $70 million. That's not an argument for them to forgo spending until then, but they could also backload any signings before that point to try to pay any free agents more in 2023 and beyond, or acquire a younger star in the next few seasons and extend him through free agency past 2023.
This is all in service of winning, however, not of profits. If the ownership's goal is simply to make money, then of course the team would trade Betts, 27, for younger talent and then simply not make the outside additions I've detailed here. The Red Sox would be competitive but probably not a contender unless they get exceptionally lucky in the trade market, or if a number of their current prospects hit their ceilings.
Trading Betts for any package that doesn't promise to address their starting pitching shortage wouldn't make baseball sense, and even a trade that does so could always go awry if the pitchers get hurt or don't work out. Michael Kopech, for example, briefly the game's top pitching prospect when Boston traded him to acquire Chris Sale, had his timeline pushed back by at least a year because of September 2018 Tommy John surgery. However, the right trade of Betts is probably the Red Sox's best chance to avoid a pitching apocalypse in the next few years and to restore them to contention a little bit sooner than they might otherwise have gotten there strictly through signing pitchers as free agents.