Every major league contract is a risk of sorts, some more than others. As a rule, the riskiest involve veteran players near the end or younger players without much of a track record.
With the former, teams are betting that current performance can continue and injuries can be minimized. With the latter, teams are betting their projections for the players are accurate and that injuries can be minimized.
For pitchers, the projection and injury aversion get trickier.
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That’s where the Red Sox find themselves, having given Brayan Bello a six-year, $55 million contract extension, carrying him through the 2029 season. The deal also features a team option for 2030 at $21 million.
That’s quite an investment for a pitcher who has made fewer than 40 major league starts to date and compiled a rather ordinary 4.37 ERA. But, of course, that’s where the projection comes in.
The Red Sox are betting that Bello will reach the ceiling of at least a No. 2 starter, and are paying him accordingly. According to the breakdown of the year-to-year salaries, the club is buying out two free agent years (2029 and 2030) and committing $40 million to do so.
That commitment will make sense if Bello becomes who the Red Sox expect him to. And if he fails to attain that level, they can always decline the option for 2030 and reduced their liability at least somewhat.
What they hope is Bello takes a significant step forward this year and begins to profile as a top-of-the-rotation arm, the likes of which they haven’t produced internally in a long, long time.
Is it fraught with risk? Yes. But it was a move the Red Sox had to make for any number of reasons. Among them:
1) Projecting remains difficult, but there are more tools available to teams than ever before.
Not long ago, deals like this were truly rolls of the dice. In addition to crossing fingers on injuries, teams had to project based on what they had already seen.
No longer.
“Player evaluation has changed a lot,” said one longtime major league front office executive. “Every team is projecting performance and the further out you go, the greater the variance (in projections). But predictions are more accurate now thanks to advances in pitch data, analysis and technology. It’s still really hard, but teams can feel more confident about their evaluation, versus what you can see only with your eyes.”
This is especially true with pitching, where the amount of available data is nearly endless. Everything from measuring the movement of pitches to biomechanical breakdowns of deliveries can go into a decision.
2) Pitching has never been more important, or for that matter, expensive.
Even with the likes of Jordan Montgomery and Blake Snell still unsigned and available on the market, established starting pitchers made a killing in free agency. Sonny Gray, Aaron Nola and Eduardo Rodriguez all signed deals worth at least $20 million annually. Several others (among them Marcus Stroman and Lucas Giolito) were close behind.
And of course, Yoshinobu Yamamoto got a guaranteed $325 million without having thrown so much as a pitch in the big leagues.
If you want to trade for an established starter, the price is still prohibitive. The Orioles gave up two top prospects for one year of Corbin Burnes. The Dodgers had to sacrifice an elite pitching prospect for a year of control of Tyler Glasnow (they then extended him at $27.5 million per season over four years).
The alternative is to develop your own, something at which the Red Sox have failed miserably over the last 15 years. If you don’t have homegrown pitching, it’s going to cost you dearly to get it — either in salary or player acquisition cost.
The Red Sox are betting that Bello is going to end their streak of futility when it comes to pitching.
3) There’s a long history with the player here.
Bello may have only slightly more than a year of major league service time to his credit, but he’s been part of the organization for an extended period.
Signed as a 16-year-old international free agent, he’s been in the system for close to nine years. That gives the Red Sox a pretty good understanding of who he is and what makes him tick.
Instead of being motivated to fully capitalize on every trip to the salary arbitration table, Bello now has his salaries fixed for the next six years, and potentially, a seventh. That means no external pressure or angst about pending free agency, but it could also invite some complacency.
If the Red Sox are convinced they he won’t be negatively impacted by the lack of a “carrot” — the possibility of earning more each year, based on performance — it’s because they know his makeup and are comfortable that he won’t become complacent.
4) Deals like this make statements.
Not in the sense of statements to the fan base and the general public — though that can’t be completely dismissed for an organization that has come under fire for failure to spend in recent seasons.
More importantly, it sends a message to the clubhouse and into the minor leagues: Yes, the Red Sox are interesting in committing to their best young players.
That’s a not insignificant message after Mookie Betts was traded a year before reaching free agency, and Xander Bogaerts, after agreeing to one extension, couldn’t be signed to a second.
Betts and Bogaerts were homegrown All-Stars and Betts remains one of the handful of best talents in the game. The fact he was dealt for 50 cents on the dollar because the Sox weren’t proactive enough to secure him to a deal sooner, or, unwilling to pay the going rate as he neared free agency, remains an embarrassment to a team with the resources of the Red Sox.
A deal like Bello’s will resonate with top prospects such as Marcelo Mayer, Kyle Teel and Roman Anthony — and others.
5) A commitment of $55 million isn’t chump change, but if this deal goes poorly, it won’t cripple the Red Sox.
This isn’t the Kansas City Royals we’re talking about. When a small-market team signs a player to a deal like this, it can’t go wrong because it would hamstring them for years.
That’s not the case here with a team with the Red Sox’ resources. Were it, say, $155 million, the stakes are different. But $55 million in guarantees? That’s hardly ruinous in a worst-case scenario.
Let’s say Bello never reaches the heights projected for him, and over the next six years, is merely a competent starter. That will mean the Red Sox are spending an average of just over $9 million annually for a starting pitcher. Even in that case, the Sox won’t be negatively impacted or restricted from making other moves.
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When Shohei Ohtani reached free agency last fall, the Red Sox weren’t part of the equation. A handful of teams stepped up to compete for the great two-way player’s services — Toronto, San Francisco, and the eventual winner, the LA Dodgers — but the Red Sox weren’t among them.
For now, other than a brief flirtation with Yamamoto, the Red Sox have kept their checkbook largely holstered the last few offseasons.
But more than a decade ago, in 2012, when Ohtani was about to begin his professional career, the Red Sox were very much in the mix.
Back then, Ohtani wasn’t the game’s most celebrated star. In fact, he was largely unknown to the Western world. But the Sox were among the teams that had scouted him extensively as an amateur. Jon Deeble, who was their scout in the Pacific Rim, along with current assistant GM Eddie Romero, both saw a lot of Ohtani and had built a rapport with him and his family.
At the time, the idea of a player both pitching and hitting was the stuff of fantasy. And even the teams pursuing him — the Red Sox, Texas Rangers and Dodgers — were open to the experiment. Mostly, however, they were just captivated by his talent and dedication.
That Ohtani was considering trying to both pitch and hit was one thing. But the notion that an 18-year-old, with no professional experience, was willing to come to North America and attempt to play the game at its highest level, was statement enough.
Further, he made an impression by being willing to take a forego a bigger payday that he would later get as part of the posting process and sign at an early age for far less also made an impression. At the time, MLB set caps on international signings, and teams could only go over their prescribed allotment by sacrificing money the following year.
“I thought it was pretty courageous and impressive at the time,” said Romero, “and it spoke to his confidence and competitiveness.”
And so, the Red Sox prepared their pitch.
“We had worked to develop to establish a relationship with him and some people around him,” recalled Pittsburgh Pirates GM Ben Cherington, who at the time held the same title with the Red Sox, “that at least gave us a window, a door opening. We had people on the ground that, at one point, actually felt it was possible to sign him. I don’t remember all the details, or the exact sequencing.
“I don’t know if we allowed ourselves to get too optimistic about it. But I do remember, there was one phone call, and it was, ‘We didn’t get him.’ When it happened that he determined he was going to stay (in Japan and sign with the Nippon Ham Fighters), it happened pretty quickly.”
Romero recalls meeting with Ohtani and his family, and watching him compete in high school games and private workouts.
“To this day,” said Romero, “it remains the best report that I’ve ever written up on a pitcher.”
Romero and Deeble, with the help of a translator, laid out the plan they had in place for Ohtani’s future. Ohtani knew that the Red Sox had a history with Japanese players, highlighted by their recruitment of Daisuke Matsuzaka. And in turn, the Sox solicited input from Matsuzaka and others as they prepared their charm offensive.
“I thought it went really well,” said Romero. “He had quite a presence even then. We made a strong push, and he decided to stay put in the NPB (Nippon Professional Baseball). He was interested in coming, but it didn’t work out. Still, it was very cool to see him in that environment. He threw a bullpen for us in a small shack, where it looked like he was throwing 200 mph. He was very impressive in every regard.”
So impressive that Romero hurried to call Cherington with his impressions, even though it was 3 a.m. stateside.
“We thought highly of him before,” said Romero, “but hearing him talk about his goals, how he saw himself, he was very mature, was quite an experience. It’s one of the highlights of the travel and doing what we do — getting to see him at that age. Even then, he was different.”
Ohtani was, at the time, somewhat uncertain as to how to proceed as a two-way player.
“He wanted to try it and we were open to it,” said Romero. “I think he was favoring pitching, but he also didn’t want to give up on hitting. But we were open to him coming in as a two-way player.”
Romero said Ohtani wasn’t very curious about Boston as a city or Fenway Park, but more intent on finding out the organization’s plan for him, with an special focus on the pitching structure and how the Sox had developed other international players.
Losing out on Ohtani then was a disappointment for the Red Sox, a turn of events that Cherington labeled “a bummer. But at the time, we didn’t know what we were missing out on. Obviously, we thought he was going to be good.”
“I would put it this way — at the time, I thought we had as good a chance as anybody,” said Romero, more than a little wistfully. “Jon and our scouts had put us in a really good position. From an evaluation standpoint, I thought we had done our homework. I had made a few visits to see him, not only in Japan but in other international tournaments. We had done a good job establishing a strong foundation for conviction with him. When decision time came, we thought, ‘We’ve done the best we can do.’ We thought we were in a good place.”
Alas, it was not good enough.
