With the re-upping of
Mitch Moreland at 1B, and the likely imminent signing of free-agent
J.D. Martinez,
the Red Sox are facing a problem. That problem's name is
Hanley Ramirez. They are not going to trade
Jackie Bradley, Jr. to make room for
HanRam and it's unlikely that they will platoon him and Moreland at 1B. So, Hanley is owed $22 million for 2018—and has an attainable $22 million vesting option for 2019. That's hard to trade away for a 34-year-old guy on the down-slide of his career. So, the only other option is to simply release Ramirez—eating the $22 million in the process. Of course, as pointed out by
Jared Carrabis, when paired with
Pablo Sandoval and
Rusney Castillo the total dead money on Boston's hands would then be $102,534,429. That's a big
banquet full of contracts to ingest. Stay tuned, the trigger needs to be pulled on
something pretty soon.
