After the Steve Pearce trade, the Red Sox have virtually no room left to operate under the Competitive Balance Tax threshold. That means that any help for the bullpen, rotation or further help for the bench would need to be payroll neutral to work. Now, you may be saying “They went past the threshold over the winter, didn’t they?” And you’d be right. But I’m not talking about the main threshold of $197M. I’m talking about the third, and final level of penalties levied once a team goes $40M above that figure.
There are three levels of taxes that hit a team as they move further and further past that $197M.