I can't see $140m of good players (realistically 115 or so after Soto and Bell) available on short-term contracts, and I can't see them committing to more than one long-term investment-type contract. I'm not sure there's a productive way to spend that much money at once, and I also suspect they will be reluctant to spend given the likely work stoppage.
This team has too many holes and too many players they want to give time to for them to fill many of them with free agents. You could easily spend that much money and still end up with a bad team, and it'd be a bad, old team to boot. For example, you could do things like spend $10 million on relievers who aren't good.
I'm hoping for Cherington 2013 after the Punto trade and finding a bunch of Gomes / Napoli / Victorino / Ueharas out there to tack onto a Gray or Cavalli breakout and a bounceback of at least one of Corbin / Stras. Easier to target than to realize.
Realistically, I'd like maybe one building block signing and some patchwork with mostly "if he's good he's really good, if he's bad he's awful" short term gambles that can be treated like Barraclough and Rosenthal if they don't work out. We laugh at the line up, but they have been scoring runs most days, TBH.
I have a hard time believing there's 1 or fewer arms in the bullpen right now and no reliable rotation pieces, but I'll admit that faith-based and not based on 2021 performance.
