BOSTON — This offseason sucks.
Apologies if that comes off crude. But it is a daily thought, and likely shared by some.
What a boring, dragging winter. Red Sox fans and employees still bask in the glow of the World Series, as they should. But the offseason is just a dud league-wide.
There’s so much anticipation around Bryce Harper and Manny Machado that a buzzkill starts to grow. The Sox' situation with their bullpen and Craig Kimbrel is similar, just on a smaller scale. J.D. Martinez Part Two, perhaps.
The Yankees are signing relievers left and right, while the Sox have their top baseball executive naming everyone in the organization as potential late-inning help.
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Dave Dombrowski entered the winter with a handful of jobs to tend to on the major league roster. He took care of one right away, re-signing Nate Eovaldi to keep the rotation together. The others: add to (or maintain) the bullpen, try to extend some players, maybe — maybe — flip some guys nearing free agency for those further away.
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The need for a reliever or two, though, was obvious. They’re going to sign one to a major league deal. They must. They will!
The first major move Dombrowski made when he got to the Red Sox was trading for Kimbrel. Now he's got a team making a title defense and an already huge payroll. This is a waiting game.
Dombrowski did the usual on Thursday, telling reporters prior to the Boston Baseball Writers Dinner that he’s monitoring the market and he likes his guys.
They’re going to sign a reliever. Whether that reliever indeed is Kimbrel and takes them over the $246 million threshold, the highest luxury tax penalty, well, we don't actually know the future. The Sox want to avoid that mark, because teams like to save money and such.
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But the song and dance we will do until the Sox do add to the ‘pen — and until some of those big names sign anywhere, anywhere at all — is just boring.
It’d be one thing if we had a sense of a steamy, scintillating market, a bidding war. For Kimbrel, for Harper.
Kyler Murray. Kyler Murray’s the draw. Whether someone goes into the NFL Draft is what's eye-catching. Oh, and labor issues. Collective bargaining. The juicy stuff.
From a Sox perspective, after Eovaldi, the biggest news this offseason has been, what, whether Dustin Pedroia is running or jogging this month?
There wasn’t much for the Sox to do this winter that would have made ripples, save for an extension for a star player. But in general, man, what a lame offseason this is.
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