Colorado’s deal with Michael Lorenzen leaves Boston standing alone - and forces a hard look at how Craig Breslow is building this roster.
On Wednesday night, MLB Network’s Mark Feinsand reported that the Colorado Rockies have signed 34-year-old right handed pitcher Michael Lorenzen to a one-year deal worth $8 million.
You’re probably wondering, ‘Why is a Red Sox blog telling me about a signing by the Colorado Rockies?’
On its surface, that’s a completely valid question.
But when you peel it back a layer, you realize it’s for a reason some in Red Sox Nation might find embarrassing.
With Colorado adding the journeyman righty, the Red Sox are now the only team in Major League Baseball to not have signed a single free agent this offseason.
They swung-and-missed on the likes of Pete Alonso and Kyle Schwarber, and were linked to the likes of Kazuma Okamoto, Jorge Polanco and Michael King.
None of the above got done for Boston, and now the Red Sox have set themselves up to be meme’d into oblivion until they get something done on the free agent market.
To be fair to the Red Sox front office, they have been very active on the trade market this offseason. So to suggest Boston hasn’t improved their roster ahead of the 2026 season would be disingenuous.
As I detailed on Roundtable last week, Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow has been about as prolific as you possibly can be when it comes to trades since taking over the job ahead of the 2024 season.
According to Alex Speier of The Boston Globe - since Breslow’s hiring in November of 2023, Boston has made 44 trades involving big leaguers. Only the Rays (49) have made more such-trades than the Red Sox in that same span, with the Orioles a distant third at 39 trades in those 26 months.
For context, as illustrated by Speier, Breslow’s 49 trades overall (majors + minors) in that span of time is already one more trade than former CBO Chaim Bloom made in his 46 months on the job.
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So why is it that Breslow is averaging nearly 2 trades a month since taking over the gig?
Speier has a theory that I’m 100% buying:
“Of course, it’s also worth noting that trades can serve as an alternative to the risks of free agency. Whereas top free agents usually require long-term deals with a likelihood of cratering performance at the back end, trades can allow teams to acquire players either for more of their prime seasons or limit the exposure to long-term risk.”
No further analysis required. Speier included quotes from Breslow, which he has to do. But we don’t need to include them here, because they’re purely lip service.
The Red Sox have prioritized avoiding tax penalties more than building the strongest possible roster every season since the end of 2019. This is not an opinion. This is a fact that they’ve all-but said verbatim at various points over the last six years.
Even after last offseason’s successes within the financial structure of acquiring guys like Garrett Crochet, Aroldis Chapman and Alex Bregman via trades and free agency, you had reporting come down Thanksgiving Weekend that said the organization is fearful of having to pay the tax penalties associated with running into the Competitive Balance Tax (CBT).
Breslow is always talking about systems, especially when it comes to Driveline Baseball’s approach to hitting. Clearly, he’s found a system that he thinks will allow him to keep this team competitive while working within the confines of the current Red Sox financial structure.
The results have yielded a playoff berth in his second full season, so I can’t knock him for this. And if you want to be critical of any person based on this quirky stat, all of the anger should be pointed at an ownership group that cares more about saving money than winning games.
Red Sox team president said on a podcast in mid-November that the Red Sox front office was “hungry,” implying a big offseason of spending ahead.
Fast forward to January 8, and Boston stands alone as the only team in baseball to remain inactive on the free agent market since the offseason officially began on November 2.
Whether or not Breslow likes to trade is one thing. What we can almost say for sure is that Breslow has to trade if he wants Boston to remain competitive in baseball’s best division.
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Tom Carroll is a contributor for Roundtable, with boots-on-the-ground coverage of all things Boston sports. He's a senior digital content producer for WEEI.com, and a native of Lincoln, RI.