As they digested their early exit from the postseason, the Red Sox expressed resolve to improve after a second-straight loss to the Yankees in the Wild Card Series.
“We commit to [the fans] that we will use that disappointment and frustration as motivation, and we will improve going forward,” said president/CEO Sam Kennedy.
But how will the Sox pursue improvement? Will they spend aggressively on free agents, focus on trades, both, or neither? Will they focus chiefly on the development of the current roster in hopes of taking steps forward?
It’s almost impossible to predict given the rules for the 2027 season — and beyond — have yet to be determined. With the collective bargaining agreement set to expire on Dec. 1, teams still don’t know what levels of spending will trigger penalties under a new CBA or those penalties’ extent. Nor, with MLB owners expected to lock out players, do they know whether there will be a full 162-game season in 2027.
Those are giant variables. At last week’s end-of-season press conference, Kennedy suggested the team’s goals wouldn’t be impacted by the sport’s unsettled state.
“The labor issues are way above our collective pay grades. So we’re moving forward business as usual as we get into the rest of October and November, December, January, February,” he said. “We’ll leave the labor stuff to the commissioner’s office, but I can assure you that our goal is to build on these two postseason appearances. … We want to build on this and take it to the next level in 2027.”
Precedent suggests their offseason strategy could be informed heavily by that labor stuff.
When the 2007-11 CBA expired, the Sox were surprised when the 2012 luxury tax threshold was set at the same level as 2011. Coming off that year’s disastrous conclusion, the Sox avoided major payroll commitments — their biggest moves were trades for pre-arbitration relievers Andrew Bailey and Mark Melancon. Then, as their 2012 season spiraled, they gratefully accepted the chance to reset their payroll when the Dodgers proposed an August blockbuster that resulted in Adrían González, Josh Beckett, and Carl Crawford going to Los Angeles.
After the 2012-16 CBA expired, president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski held off on defining his offseason strategy until the new CBA was negotiated. When the luxury tax threshold bumped up only slightly from $189 million to $195 million, the Sox, who planned to duck under the threshold in 2017 to reset their penalties, focused on making their biggest offseason upgrades via trade (most notably, for Chris Sale) rather than free agent signings.
When the CBA expired after the 2021 season, the Sox were one of many teams to engage in a flurry of offseason moves just before MLB owners locked out the players, jumping to sign free agents Michael Wacha, Rich Hill, and James Paxton while trading Hunter Renfroe to the Brewers for Jackie Bradley Jr. and prospects David Hamilton and Alex Binelas.
But notably, the Sox kept their commitments for 2022 roughly at the same level where they’d finished 2021 — just below the luxury tax threshold. It wasn’t until after the lockout ended in March that the team signed Trevor Story as a free agent, thus taking the payroll past where the new luxury tax line was defined.
So, what does MLB’s unresolved labor picture mean for the Red Sox this offseason?
The team doesn’t know if the luxury tax will still exist in 2027; if it does, where the threshold will lie; or whether it will deem any penalties for spending beyond a hypothetical luxury tax threshold worth paying.
The Sox spent beyond in both 2025 and 2026. The team has not done that for three straight years since 2004-07.
This year, that threshold was $244 million. The Sox, according to Spotrac, project to have spent a bit more than $270 million as calculated for luxury tax purposes, incurring a tax bill of roughly $9 million.
With uncertainty about the sport’s economic future, they might choose to remain within arm’s reach of the 2026 line entering the work stoppage, then adjust spending plans based on where 2027’s is set.
Using MLB Trade Rumors arbitration estimates, the Globe calculates the Sox have roughly $258.5 million in payroll commitments (as calculated for luxury tax purposes under the current CBA) for 2027.
That projection assumes they’ll tender contracts to most of their arbitration-eligible players — a group that includes anticipated staples such as Adley Rutschman and Wilyer Abreu, role players such as Andruw Monasterio and Jahmai Jones, and players such as Tanner Houck and Johan Oviedo who were injured for most of 2026.
If the Sox traded or nontendered Jarren Duran, projected to receive an $11.1 million salary through arbitration, and another injured player such as Kutter Crawford, projected a $2.8 million arbitration salary, the team would be close to that $244 million line without any additions.
That doesn’t rule out the possibility of roster changes — particularly trades and nontendering of players — before a lockout. Still, if precedent holds, the Sox seem unlikely to add significant payroll until after the new CBA is negotiated, if then.
Alex Speier can be reached at alex.speier@globe.com. Follow him @alexspeier.