By Jeff Louderback
Thank you, once again, Los Angeles Dodgers.
On Wednesday, the Associated Press reported that the Boston Red Sox will make an annual payment of $3.9 million to the Dodgers in 2013, 2014 and 2015 to complete last summer’s trade that sent the cumbersome contracts of Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford and Josh Beckett, and Nick Punto, to LA for the payroll relief and prospects Rubby De La Rosa, Allen Webster, Jerry Sands and Ivan De Jesus.
As part of the trade, the Dodgers will cover $250.8 million in salaries from the players they received while the Red Sox are responsible for just $11.7 million split over the three years.
Not only did the transaction give Boston payroll flexibility for building their roster for 2013, but it will also help for upcoming seasons, especially since only Shane Victorino, Dustin Pedroia and Clay Buchholz are signed beyond 2014.
Technically John Lackey’s signed beyond 2014 as well. But that now exercised option season will only be for the league minimum.
Napoli as well once the fix whatever snags there is in negotiation.
I didn’t include Napoli because who knows what the contract language will be if it is finalized. They could exercise the league minimum option for Lackey in 2015, and I imagine they will if he returns to his pre-2008, pre-elbow problems form, but since it is an option, I didn’t include it.
I thought the option became automatically exercised if he were to miss time due to elbow problems.
Dempster to Red Sox. Two years $26.5 million.
Yep saw that, but I’m calling a few other sources to confirm because I don’t always trust Ken Rosenthal and Buster Olney.