McAdam: In contemplating trading of Mookie Betts, Red Sox faced with tough choices

There's a lot on the line for Chaim Bloom and the Red Sox these days.

First, Bloom must determine whether his first big move as chief baseball officer will be to trade off the team's best player -- and one of the handful of best players in the game -- Mookie Betts.

Bloom must ask himself whether it's better to move Betts and get some prospects and/or young major leaguers in return, or to hold onto Betts for now, and either deal him at July's deadline or keep him for the entirety of the 2020 season.

That's a daunting enough decision for any executive.

But for Bloom, it's only the beginning. Because if Bloom comes to the conclusion the Red Sox will be better off trading Betts before the start of the season, the choices become more difficult.



Do the Sox try to get the most talent back for Betts? Or do they put more focus on cutting payroll? At this point, it doesn't appear Bloom and the Sox can have both.

Some perspective: the Red Sox are known to be engaged in trade talks for Betts with at least two teams -- the San Diego Padres and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

As befits two franchises at opposite ends of baseball's competitive spectrum, the offers are quite different.

The Padres finished in last place in 2019 and haven't made the postseason since 2006. Among National League teams, that's the longest playoff drought. In fact, in all of baseball, only the Seattle Mariners (2001) have a longer stretch of futility. The Padres need to win now and need to attract fans -- hence, their interest in Betts, who is under control only for this season.

But there's a catch: the Padres are not the money pit the Dodgers are. Their payroll, projected to be somewhere around $150 million, is already a bit over budget and Betts will earn $27 million in 2020.

So to make a deal for him work, the Padres are reportedly insisting that the Red Sox take back Wil Myers to help lessen the financial load. Myers has three years and $61 million remaining.

Because a team's payroll is determined by the average annual value (AAV) of players' contracts, Myers "cap hit'' for 2020 would be just under $14 million. (His deal is back-loaded. He'll make $20 million annually over the next three years with a $1 million buyout on 2023, but because the total deal was six years for $83 million, he comes in at $13.8 million for luxury tax purposes).

Taking Myers off the Padres' hands will allow the Red Sox to get more in return in terms of prospects. They might reasonably ask for two very good prospects, though the Padres have already made it known that their top three prospects -- pitchers MacKenzie Gore and Luis Patino and shortstop C.J. Abrams -- are off the table, since Betts has only a year of control remaining.

Still, the Sox could end up with, say, catcher Luis Campusano and likely another player in the Padres' top 10 prospect grouping.

However, those prospects would come at a cost to the Sox' efforts to reduce their own payroll and get under the first luxury tax threshold of $208 million. Moving Betts and his $27 million would be offset by taking on almost $14 million with Myers. That would represent a net savings of just over $13 million, leaving the Red Sox some $15 million above the $208 million figure.

In the long-term, they would be better off in acquiring two good young players around which they can rebuild. But in the short-term, they would still need to move another significant salary (Jackie Bradley Jr? Nathan Eovaldi? David Price?) to get under the first threshold.

If, on the other hand, the Sox were to deal Betts to the Dodgers, they would have the opposite problem. The Dodgers have the resources to take on all of the money due to Betts and wouldn't need the Sox to absorb a big contract in return.

But precisely because the Dodgers were assuming all of the money due to Betts without any offset and the fact that he's signed only through the end of the upcoming season, the return for the Sox wouldn't be as great.

They might obtain, say, outfielder Alex Verdugo (with not quite two years of service time) and a lesser prospect.

The Sox would get their necessary salary relief (going from an estimated $236 down to $209 million, leaving them a mere million over the first CBT threshold), but they wouldn't getting nearly as much talent as the deal with the Padres could offer.

Which path the Sox choose will tell us a lot. Are they prioritizing re-setting their tax rate, or maximizing the most talent in exchange for parting with their best player?