Red Sox overpay for former Yankee in free agency after Brewers' World Series run

The free agency dam is slowly starting to break. This week, closer Emilio Pagan signed with the Tigers, Evan Phillips landed with the Braves, and then a Yankees rival struck with the biggest contract yet on Friday.

The Red Sox are signing former Yankee and Brewers World Series champion Jake Bauers to a four-year, $58 million contract. One would suspect Boston's bringing him in to play first base, but Bauers also logged 46 games in the corner outfield spots this past season. Right now, the Sox don't need any outfielders and Willson Contreras is also their first baseman.

Perhaps there's a world in which Bauers bounces around a little bit to give manager Chad Tracy some more flexibility. This also likely accelerated Boston parting with one or more players, like Triston Casas, Masataka Yoshida and/or Jarren Duran.

Whatever the case, Yankees know Bauers very well from his horrid 2023 campaign with the team. That year, he subtracted 0.9 WAR from the Bombers in 84 games, hitting .202 with a .693 OPS. In fact, Bauers, who is entering his age-31 season, has generally been a bad major leaguer.

Across 757 career games, he's accumulated 2.0 WAR since debuting in 2018. Heading into 2026, he actually sported a negative WAR mark before his career-best season turned everything around. En route to the Brew Crew's first ever championship run, Bauers hit .266 with 26 homers, 86 RBI and an .874 OPS. He blew past his prior career marks of 12 homers, 48 RBI and .752 OPS. He finished with 3.3 WAR.

Red Sox are going to regret signing former Yankees slugger Jake Bauers

The Red Sox apparently thought one good year offensively and -1.5 dWAR was worth nearly $15 million per season. We thought they were trying to cut back on extraneous additions, like Yoshida, Trevor Story, Kristian Campbell and Brayan Bello, but apparently not. They've given out the biggest contract of the offseason thus far to a redundant roster addition.

All that being said, we are sure this'll work out for Craig Breslow somehow. Boston will use Pat Murphy's post-World Series Yankees insult as fuel for this signing and all of Red Sox Twitter will tweet the video anytime he does something relevant against New York. This is life now.

Sox Devil Magic and sarcasm aside, this should not end favorably for them. Unless Bauers experiences a complete career renaissance in his 30s — which is just about as unlikely as it gets — it seems as if Boston added some lefty pop and not much more.

Additionally, the Red Sox have been mentioned in some bizarre rumors. They were linked to Twins catcher Ryan Jeffers, who has the qualifying offer attached to him, despite recently trading for Adley Rutschman. They were also linked to a Teoscar Hernandez trade with the Dodgers. It just seems like they have a ton of roster work to do before making any such additions, including Bauers.

Let them get older and less athletic, though. You won't see Yankees fans complaining about that. Oh yeah, and the Sox will have to give up a draft pick to the Brewers since Bauers just rejected the QO. Not a bad start to the Yankees' offseason if you ask us.

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