Addison Reed to the rescue
Ask and you shall receive.
...bad ownership (Henry refuses to pay luxury tax while his competition, the Yankees, laugh at it)
What are you talking about? Payrolls seems to vary according to what site you visit, but the Red Sox are strongly entrenched in 3rd, just behind the Yankees. There is definitely an argument to be made about how the money should be spent, but complaining that the Red Sox don't spend enough money comes off as sounding very spoiled. Almost every other team would love to have the money and resources that the Sox have.
The Red Sox problem is they have spent a lot of their money poorly (Craig, Panda, Castillo, Smith, Thornburg trades, etc). And have damaged some guys playing them out of position in LF(Swihart, Hanley).That has put them in a hole where they can't spend much more unless they want to pay the luxury tax. And Henry won't do that. The Yankees? The luxury tax is a joke to them. Always has been. They see an opening here, and have turned on the afterburners. Good for them. I like Girardi better than Farrell anyways. The Yanks have paid over a billion dollars in luxury taxes since the start of it, and they ain't stopping if they think they can win.
No disagreement there, but it is hard not to like any other manager better than Farrell. I suppose he deserves some credit for the miraculous 2014 WS championship team, but it has been time to move on for a while now.
Frankly, I wish the MLB would adopt similar payroll restrictions to sports like the NBA or NFL. This would certainly not work out in the Red Sox favor, but blindly spending tens of millions of dollars on perennial losers isn't helping our cause. Our payroll (and dead money) is stocked with crappy/overrated players. Like $80M/yr alone is locked up in Price, Hanley, and Sandoval. It's embarrassing. And it's not like Porcello has been tearing it up with his $20M+/yr contract. That is over $100M/yr for just those four guys.
Our best players don't even make any money - it's crazy.
Yeah, MLB is built for big markets with no salary cap. Steinbrenner's Yankees capitalized on that, and now the latest Yankee actions indicate they are set to repeat it. Very clever what they did--bought a couple of stud closers as FAs (Miller, Chapman), then traded them for prospects to rejuvenate their farm system. Then re-signed Chapman back. Clever, indeed.
Ben Cherington was no match for Cashman. Poor Ben was in over his head after lucky '14. He did nothing right after that. Neither did Henry, except for hiring Dombrowski as soon as he became available. DD has been good, except for bad luck with Smith and Thornburg. The lack of a setup guy has killed them this year, as Farrell can't seem to make a correct pitching decision in the 8th inning. That has been effectively taken out of his hands with the trade for setup guy Reed.
I'm slightly more optimistic than before the Reed deal, but I think the Yankees have seized the day and will be tough to overcome. They smelled blood and are going for the jugular. They also get tons of media support in the networks. The Red Sox in high gear are still the class of the East, but Farrell is a liability who costs them games.