The Red Sox are back to playing the big-market version of Moneyball.
Coming off their second last-place finish in three seasons, the Sox had a crater at third base and a glaring need for a lefthanded bat in their lineup. They filled those holes with cold hard cash, signing the top two third-base options on the free-agent market, Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval.
The Sox didn’t wait until Black Friday to do their shopping, and they certainly didn’t get any discounts in lucrative deals for Ramirez and the switch-hitting Sandoval. Ramirez’s deal is reported to be four years at $22 million per season with a vesting option for a fifth season. The contract for World Series hero and Yawkey Way marketing godsend Sandoval, known as the Kung Fu Panda, is said to be for $95 million over five years.
The folks at 4 Yawkey Way have strayed far from the Grady Sizemore clearance bin and owner John Henry’s don’t-trust-anyone-over-30 declaration in Bloomberg Businessweek back in April.
Whether you like the signings or not, the Ramirez and Sandoval additions represent an important and encouraging shift for the Sox — a willingness to take on risk again. The Sox had become risk-averse after getting burned by long-term deals doled out to Carl Crawford, Adrian Gonzalez, and Josh Beckett. Long term, you can’t win in life or baseball without taking some risks.
Make no mistake, signing the soon-to-be 31-year-old Ramirez and the rotund Sandoval represents risk. Ramirez, who likely will have to move to the outfield, is Fenway fine china. He has played fewer than 100 games in two of the last four seasons. He’s a high-end righthanded hitter and high-maintenance personality. Get ready for Hanley being Hanley.
Sandoval is 28, but he has a body by Burger King. The only thing that has trimmed down the last three seasons is his on base plus slugging percentage. He is a surprisingly good defender, and the hope is his power will tick back up once he is freed from playing home games at San Francisco’s AT&T Park.
With the American League East there for the taking, the Sox are reversing course on their team-building tenets.
After getting a baseball bailout from the Los Angeles Dodgers, who absorbed Crawford, Gonzalez, Beckett, and $263 million in salary back in 2012, the Sox swore off longer-term, top-of-the-market deals for free agents. After pushing away from the high-rollers’ table, the Sox and Henry (who is also the owner of the Globe) are now back at it, where they belong.
Standing on principle was nice, but standing on principal is competitive reality for the Sox. By limiting themselves on financial commitments, the Sox were leveling the playing field for the Oaklands, Tampa Bays, and Kansas Cities of the world.
One of the advantages of being the Boston Red Sox is that no player is out of your financial reach, and spendthrift contracts that would cripple other clubs can be written off. The $189 million luxury tax threshold should be a checkpoint, not a roadblock for the Sox.
Emboldened by the 2013 World Series championship, the Sox had ceded that advantage in the name of risk aversion. The 2013 overnight overhaul saw the Sox go 7 for 7 on free-agent signings by limiting the length of contracts. Not a single one of the seven free agents got a deal longer than three years.
Shrewd, opportunistic signings, foundation pieces like Dustin Pedroia and David Ortiz, and their cache of prospects were all the Sox needed to compete. That model crashed in 2014 like a pile of Jenga pieces, as the Sox won 71 games and slipped back into the cellar.
Almost as bad as finishing last again, the Sox were a manila-envelope-dull team. They ranked 18th in the majors in runs, and 24th in slugging percentage (.369). They hit 123 home runs, their fewest in a full season since 1993 — or the Bob Zupcic Era, as I call it. (The Z-Man played 141 games in ’93.)
So here come prodigal uber-prospect Ramirez and Sandoval to boost the lineup and the entertainment value. (In a circle-of-life irony, Ramirez was the key figure in the deal that brought Beckett from the Marlins exactly nine years before Ramirez’s return.)
While risk is back in the Red Sox’ vocabulary and on their balance sheet, the overarching plan for this offseason remains murky. Ramirez is going to have to play the outfield with Xander Bogaerts ensconced at shortstop. The Sox already have a glut of outfielders.
General manager Ben Cherington and the Sox seem to feel outfielders are interchangeable and disposable. Someone from the outfield surfeit — looking at you, Yoenis Cespedes — should be dealt to acquire starting pitching.
Bolstering the rotation remains an offseason priority in the Fens.
The only thing the Sox have resisted more than the big-money deal recently is dealing away any of their prized prospects. Just like Ramirez and Sandoval, a reunion with Jon Lester would only cost money.
Of course, Lester is going to cost more now than he would have if the Sox had changed their viewpoint on the market last February.
Market factors have changed in MLB. The new television deal, which kicked in this year, has more teams flush with funds to retain their stars.
On the same day that the Sox lured both Ramirez and Sandoval to the Hub, there were reports that the Seattle Mariners were on the verge of locking up 27-year-old, lefthanded-hitting third baseman Kyle Seager to a seven-year, $100 million deal.
Many of the best position players are no longer reaching free agency or being groomed for trades to big-market clubs. Their teams are locking them up (see: Stanton, Giancarlo).
This much is clear: The Red Sox believe accepting risk is necessary to return to contention.
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Christopher L. Gasper can be reached at cgasper@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @cgasper.