Epstein and Red Sox preparing to be offseason’s biggest spenders

Peter Abraham of the Boston Globe did some inferring based on a few Theo Epstein statements and came to the conclusion that the Red Sox may be preparing to spend a whole bunch of money this offseason Epstein mentioned to Abraham that part of the motivation for restructuring Tim Wakefield’s contract yesterday was to save $1.5 million under the competitive balance tax. As the general manager put it: “That’s important because there are some things we want to do this winter and we don’t have a ton of room under the CBT.” That statement seems fairly innocuous until you realize that the CTB threshold for 2010 is $170 million. Not only was the Red Sox’s payroll this year “only” $125 million, Abraham did some math on likely arbitration raises for Jonathan Papelbon, Jeremy Hermida, Hideki Okajima, and Ramon Ramirez, and came to the conclusion that they’ll have about $109 million committed for next season before doing anything via free agency. Here’s more from Abraham:

Let’s say they sign Jason Bay for $18 million. So now they’re at $127 million. Where is that extra $43 million coming from that Theo seemed concerned about? Are the Red Sox leaving room for Roy Halladay and some other superstar? This is total conjecture, of course, and perhaps Epstein was just musing out loud. But perhaps that was a clue that the Sox are, if nothing else, giving themselves the option to make a huge splash.

Last offseason the Yankees were the biggest of big spenders, but this time around it looks like the Red Sox are positioning themselves to do some serious shopping.