3 contracts the Red Sox will regret this offseason

Baseball numbers are weird, and when it comes to money they're especially bizarre. Without a salary cap, a MLB player's average salary comes second only to the average basketball player on the list of athlete earnings in the United States. Contract numbers that might seem astronomical compared to almost any other occupation in the world, like the MLB minimum $720,000, represent either an untested player or one who's trying to salvage his career. At that rate, it's hard to conceive of any player who is underpaid, though giving a player only a couple million dollars does, bafflingly, qualify as a bargain in MLB.

Here are three contracts the Red Sox will regret this offseason (if they don't already)

When you consider the kind of contracts the Boston Red Sox are doling out, things become even harder to comprehend. The Red Sox were in the top half of league spenders in 2023, with a total payroll of $183 million dollars, and will probably spend even more in 2024. Unfortunately, over a third of it will go to three players who have enormous contracts they haven't been able to live up to on the field.

It feels wise to include a warning here: some may find the following contracts, which amount to over $300 million over the next 1-5 years, physically unsettling.