I love Boston’s angst in the wake of the Mookie Betts trade/salary dump.
Here’s a quote from a story at TheRinger.com, a Boston sports site pretending to be national (admittedly with some success): “This is a salary dump and not from some woebegone Midwestern also-ran but from the Boston Red Sox. The most successful franchise of the past 15 years has announced that it won’t make a credible effort to compete.”
Wow. That’s terrible.
But speaking as a resident of Pittsburgh, the home of “some woebegone Midwestern also-ran,” let me take the opportunity to say ***k you. How does it feel? For one day, you’re no better, and I love it.
The Red Sox are worth $3.2 billion. That value ranks third in MLB.
But the Red Sox traded arguably baseball's best player because they couldn’t afford him. The Red Sox payroll is around $180 million, but Betts’ $27 million salary for 2020 was apparently their breaking point. (They also ditched David Price’s ticket, which pays $96 million over the next three years.)
I was watching TV last night, clicking back and forth between “Moneyball” and coverage of the Betts trade. No small amount of irony there.