There’s terrible news everywhere you turn if you’re a baseball fan in Boston. Not only are the 2026 Red Sox a train wreck, but in a broader landscape across the sport, the players and owners are gearing up for their most bitter fight since 1994 when the World Series was wiped out. Tensions only seemed to escalate higher last month when the owners proposed a salary cap, and the players, as expected, wholeheartedly rejected it.
This is all another way of saying that as bad as the 2026 Red Sox are, next
year might get even worse for diehard baseball fans in New England as there seems to be a growing chance that there’s no baseball at all.
In the short-term, this proposes an interesting issue for the Red Sox: How should a potential looming lockout impact their deadline?
I’m going to use Willson Contreras as the example here to get the ball rolling because he’s probably the most important guy surrounding this issue. On one hand, he’s an obvious candidate to move. He’s the veteran player having a great season who can probably help somebody win a World Series this fall. But then again, many fans are looking at his contract and noting he’s not only under control for 2027, but that there’s also a team option for 2028. With the Red Sox lacking good, right-handed bats and other respectable options at first base, they’d argue that the Red Sox should keep Contreras around.
But what if the Red Sox, and particularly John Henry, have a better idea of how 2027 is going to play out on the labor front than the rest of us? The reason I ask is because it’s worth exploring how Contreras’ value to the Red Sox changes if you think/know we’re going to lose the 2027 season. At the very least, it’s another monkey wrench in the system that is the highly dysfunctional 2026 Red Sox.
Use this thread to talk about Contreras, the upcoming labor war, and whatever else you’d like, and as always, be good to one another.
