Five free agents the Red Sox should avoid, starting with Ohtani

Everyone's got a list of top-tier free agents the Red Sox should pursue. That's easy. A more useful exercise might be picking which big-money items to avoid.

The Red Sox have money to spend this winter, since deposed chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom left replacement Craig Breslow with only two big contracts on the books: Rafael Devers (10 years, $313.5 million) and Trevor Story (six years, $140 million through 2027). Masataka Yoshida also has four years and about $75 million remaining on his deal, but that still leaves the Red Sox roughly $40 million beneath the first luxury tax threshold.

So consider this a public service, as we break down five free agents the Red Sox should pass on, even if they look tempting.

1. Shohei Ohtani, RHP/DH

Sorry, not interested. No athlete in professional sports has asked more of his body than Ohtani over the last three years, and we can already see the results: He underwent elbow surgery before the season even ended. Following his 2018 Tommy John surgery, it's apparent that Ohtani is not built to last, but that won't stop someone from paying him like he's going to play forever.

The first criterion for any record contract should be availability, and it's nonsensical to imagine a world in which Ohtani keeps slugging and slinging deep into his 30s. Let someone else pay him $600 million to break down, especially since a third elbow surgery could very well end his hitting career, too.

2. Blake Snell, LHP

There was once a time when the Red Sox declared that signing starters in their 30s represented bad business, but then Jon Lester happened and they reversed course, ending up with David Price and Chris Sale on the same staff.

The fundamentals of that gamble have not changed, however, which makes the 30-year-old a risk, and that's before we even address the left-hander's wild inconsistency. Between the Cy Young Award that he won in 2018 with the Rays and the one that he's probably going to win this month with the Padres, Snell went 25-26 with a 3.85 ERA while receiving exactly zero Cy Young votes.

Even this past year, which ended with an NL-best 2.25 ERA, Snell didn't really take off until late May. Add the fact that Snell led the NL in walks (99), and his resume doesn't scream consistency. He has only topped eight wins twice in eight years, and he could easily end up being this year's Carlos Rodón, the left-hander who signs a big contract and then pitches not to his best seasons, but his most common, pedestrian ones.

3. Eduardo Rodriguez, LHP

Anybody feel like dancing with E-Rod again? Didn't think so.

Look, we've already lived this. Rodriguez wows us for stretches and then disappears. In the case of the Tigers, he took the second half of that sentence literally – they lost contact with him for a month in 2022 while he dealt with marital issues, and then this season he vetoed a trade to the Dodgers that could have put him on a World Series contender down the stretch. What does it say about his competitiveness that he declined?

Breslow and E-Rod were Red Sox teammates in 2015, so the new boss has an idea of what his mercurial teammate is like behind the scenes. Here's hoping that's enough to steer him in a different direction.

4. Lucas Giolito, RHP

No more bargains! No more bounce-back candidates! The Red Sox have a rich tradition dating to Dan Duquette -- who never met a Bret Saberhagen, Ramon Martinez, or David Cone he didn't think he could resuscitate -- of betting on reclamation projects.

But after four years of Bloom constantly taking one-year fliers on over-the-hill veterans, let someone else try to fix Giolito, a former All-Star with the White Sox who simply cratered last year.

He pitched for three teams, and his ERA got progressively worse with each of them, from 3.79 with the White Sox to 6.89 with the Angels to 7.04 with the Guardians. He surrendered a league-leading 41 homers, which makes him one of only 10 pitchers since 2000 to serve up that number, and he has trended in the wrong direction for two years now.

5. James Paxton, LHP

Speaking of reclamation projects, don't forget Big Maple. A success story for about half a season, he predictably wore down and the fact that Bloom didn't trade him when he had the chance probably helped cost him his job. Paxton is what he is -- an injury-prone 35-year-old capable of being overpowering, but not in a remotely consistent or reliable way.

The Red Sox missed their chance to maximize him as an asset, and now there's no point in a reunion. They already are counting on one unreliable left-hander in Sale; there's no point in adding another.