McAdam: Mega deal may be good for bottom line, but is that the new standard for Red Sox?

From a business standpoint, the Red Sox accomplished what they set out to do this offseason in pulling off their three-team, five-player deal Tuesday night that cost them Mookie Betts and David Price while netting them outfielder Alex Verdugo and pitching prospect Brusdar Graterol.

By slashing payroll and getting well under the first competitive balance tax (CBT) threshold of $208 million, the Red Sox, lessened their future salary obligations, avoid paying any luxury tax for the first time since 2017 and take a big step toward their goal of creating a sustainable organization, one capable of competing for a championship on a consistent basis.

Swell.

But in the short-term, the loss of Betts (especially) and Price (less so) means the Red Sox are waving the proverbial white flag for 2020.



Sure, the team may well say that they expect to be competitive during the upcoming season, and if Chris Sale rebounds with better health and Nathan Eovaldi stays healthy, they could, indeed, be in the running for one of two wild-card spots.

But that's asking for a lot to go right. And usually, when a team needs a series of events or developments to take place in order to enjoy a good season, something goes off the rails. A .500 season is a far more likely outcome.

Meanwhile, the fun has been zapped out of Fenway. Gone is the five-tool excitement that Betts brought to the ballpark -- the quick-twitch power, the explosive acceleration that he flashed as he rounded first on a ball hit to the gap, and the seemingly effortless manner in which he covered the vast expanse of Fenway's right field.

And those are just his obvious baseball skills.

Losing Betts also means something else, something harder to define. Betts was part of a homegrown nucleus the organization nurtured and developed into stardom. He was, in fact, the best part.

Now that he's gone, sacrificed at the altar of fiscal responsibility, an unsettling feeling looms over the franchise: Is this a sign of things to come?

Red Sox fans have to go back 40 years to find the last time the Sox rid themselves of stars for financial reasons, when Fred Lynn, Carlton Fisk and others were either traded or encouraged to leave in order for the club to save its precious resources.

Later, some star players -- Nomar Garciaparra, Mo Vaughn, Roger Clemens -- all saw their Red Sox careers end prematurely, but in nearly every case, there were mitigating factors involved.

The Red Sox didn't always win and they didn't always spend wisely, but spend they did on stars -- Manny Ramirez, Hanley Ramirez and Price, to name just three.

The Sox were a big market team, and when things bottomed out, they would willfully spend themselves out of the hole into which they had fallen. They were a prototypical big-market team and could routinely be counted on to be among the top bidders for the game's biggest stars. There was no one who was too costly.

From 2010 through 2019, they spent more than any team in baseball. In 2018, which culminated in their last World Series, they spent more money than they ever had before.

Today, that seems like a very long time ago. Now, the buzzwords are "sustainability,'' and "resetting'' -- hardly the kind of talk that gets fans excited for the start of a season. Those are phrases that routinely get thrown around in Cleveland and Milwaukee and Kansas City, but not here.

Boston, meanwhile, was in a different class, thrown in with other financial behemoths in New York, Chicago, and, yes, Los Angeles. This was the big leagues, after all, and the Red Sox were going to spend like they belonged.

Maybe Verdugo, whom the Red Sox control for the next five seasons, will blossom into an All-Star outfielder. Maybe Graterol will emerge as a top starting pitcher, the likes of which the Red Sox haven't been able to develop for the last 15 or so years.

But it's doubtful that either will be the star that Betts was in Boston, a player who not only won an MVP but also finished in the Top 6 in AL MVP voting in two other seasons. He was, by consensus, one of the handful of best players in the game, perhaps even second-best to only Mike Trout.

And now he's a Dodger, traded because the Red Sox needed some return on an investment seemingly headed out the door, dealt for something better than a pick after the fourth round in the 2021 draft.

That's not a baseball trade. That's a face-saving trade, executed by a team suddenly more focused, for the time being at least, on the bottom line rather than what's between the lines -- and that makes it a sad day in Red Sox history.