I absolutely agree with you here. If you get Burnes and he performs, you give him the cash. Just like you did with Pedro and Schilling and Beckett and Sale. (One of those deals is unlike the others.)The Sox aren’t on even financial standing with Milwaukee though. They have budget constraints that we do not have. I absolutely would be willing to deal with the Boras headache on Burnes. He’s tremendous and you have to pay up sometime. The Yankees will be doing it next offseason with Soto. The Red Sox need to leverage their competitive advantage here.
And I think that this is what happens when you neglect pitching development. You’re going to pay for it either way. And you can pay for it with just cash (Yamamoto) or you pay for it with cash and prizes (Burnes).
Complaining about the cost or thinking that you can get a deal is foolish. Pitching is a commodity. Everyone knows this. Commodities are expensive. We should know this.