Predicting the outcome for every Red Sox option for 2023

After overspending and paying a Competitive Balance Threshold overage in 2022, the Boston Red Sox have a substantial amount of financial flexibility this offseason. Exactly how much depends on one thing:

Options.

Between club, player, and mutual options, there’s over $60M in potential luxury tax allocations yet to be decided. With the 2023 luxury tax threshold at $233M, that’s a significant amount of money.

The good news is that for various reasons, there’s absolutely no chance the Red Sox end up paying every player with any kind of option next year. With some player options, it’s painfully obvious who will choose to stick around. Others are less certain. Some options may be declined in order to negotiate a different deal, too.

Here’s a prediction for every 2023 option…

Will Xander Bogaerts opt out of his Red Sox contract?

At this point, this question has been dissected more than a frog in high school biology.

To make a long story short, Bogaerts wants to stay in Boston, but he also wants to be paid what he’s earned, and the Sox insulted him with a lower-than-lowball offer last spring. They keep raving to everyone who’ll listen about how they want to keep him in Boston, but we’ll believe it when we see it. Plenty of teams will happily pay one of the best shortstops in baseball if the Red Sox are too “stupid” (David Ortiz‘s exact choice of descriptor) to do so.

There’s a good possibility that Bogaerts opts out. There’s also a good possibility that if the Sox don’t keep him, they’ll lose a lot of fans.