Rob Bradford

And in this case, what they're not willing to do is not do this no-trade clause, even though you get somewhat close on the financials.

So if you're the boss at Red Sox and you are close to your plan A,

then you have to understand free agency is uncomfortable, and you have to do things that are uncomfortable.

They did it last year by giving him the opt-outs, and it came back to bite him.

So what?

You move forward.

You've got to get the guy.

You cannot let another team beat you for your plan A if you're the Red Sox.

And, you know, we had Zach Scott on the podcast.

Zach Scott, obviously, he was assistant GM of the Red Sox, GM for the Mets, and he'd been with the Red Sox for a long time, and he lived through a lot of those conversations about no trade clauses.

It's like, listen, we gave no trade clauses.

We just called them something else.

You know, Pedroia, Dale, Daisuke.

We just maneuvered around the verbiage of it a little bit.

But I think that they just are so dug in on their models, and that's never going to win you in free agency.

And not to interrupt you, but we keep surfing this Andrew Friedman comment from 2016, but it rings true.

It's that if you try to be logical about every free agent, you're going to finish third on every free agent.

And the NIL thing is a perfect example.

It's all right to lose out on certain guys, but you can't lose out on the guys that you know are the be-all, end-all that you're going to build your whole system around.

Yeah, I mean, there's two different ways it can go.