What Red Sox Gained From Cautious Trade Deadline Approach

The Boston Red Sox didn’t do much to change their roster at the 2023 Major League Baseball trade deadline.

Not immediately, anyway.

There was plenty of confusion to come out of Tuesday’s deadline, as Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom took the understated approach to addressing the team’s roster needs. In fact, striking a deal with the Milwaukee Brewers to land utility infielder Luis Urías was all Boston did on the day itself, leading to questions as to why it didn’t attempt to make any sort of splash.

The short answer? A better future.

It was pointed out by Sean McAdam of MassLive that Boston’s slow deadline makes it a virtual certainty that it will stay below the Competitive Balance Tax (CBT) to finish the season. That will allow the Red Sox to reap a few benefits.

The most obvious one comes in improved compensation picks should they lose a qualified free agent in the offseason. The Red Sox were over the CBT last year, which led to fourth-round compensation picks for losing Xander Bogaerts and Nathan Eovaldi. If it were under the CBT, Boston would have received second-round comp picks.

It also opens up more spending money, as a return under the CBT drops the penalty back to 20 percent on overages. What does that mean? The Red Sox can now push past the tax threshold (which will be set at $237 million in 2024) and only occur a 20 percent penalty on international free agent and draft signing pool money. If they didn’t reset, the penalty would have increased to 30 percent.

There are plenty of intriguing names set to hit the open market (Shohei Ohtani, anybody?) and the Red Sox now have the ability to place their hat firmly in the ring for most, if not all of them.

It took Bloom a while to clean up the mess left by those before him. He juiced up the Red Sox farm system, built up their MLB roster with young talent and even saw them get within two wins of the World Series.

This winter could be the time he puts it all together.