Owner: Red Sox plan to be under tax threshold for 2020

Boston Red Sox principal owner John Henry said Friday his team wants to be under the first level of MLB's competitive balance threshold for the 2020 season, according to Jason Mastrodonato of the Boston Herald.

"This year, we need to be under the CBT and that was something we've known for more than a year now," Henry explained. "If you don't reset there are penalties, so we've known for some time now we needed to reset as other clubs have done."

With that said, Red Sox chairman Tom Werner explained the team still plans to be competitive.

"Our real intention is to be competitive every year and we'll do whatever we have to to do that," Werner said. "The solution to that isn't always having the highest payroll in baseball."

In order to get under the $208-million threshold and reset their current tax penalties, the Red Sox will need to restructure their payroll in a major way, indicating a clear change of direction, Mastrodonato notes.

The Red Sox exceeded the luxury-tax threshold in 2018 and 2019 and could be presented with a 50% tax on all overages should they go over again in 2020.

Boston's payroll is currently hovering around $238 million for luxury-tax purposes with roughly $50 million coming off the books this offseason. But the Red Sox will likely add an equal amount in contract extensions and salary-arbitration raises.

Unless outfielder J.D. Martinez opts out of his current deal, which appears unlikely, the Red Sox will need to get creative with their payroll.

Werner explained 2020 would "absolutely not" be a bridge year for the Red Sox, adding the organization might need to follow the lead of some of baseball's more cost-effective franchises.

"One of the things we observe, and I think we all observe, is first of all, there are teams that make the postseason with half the payroll the Red Sox have," he said. "Look at the success Oakland has had this year and the Milwaukee Brewers. And we have resources.

"And I would just like to say that while we would like to get under the competitive balance tax threshold, we have had years we've been above it, we’ve had years where we were below it. There may be certain circumstances that we exceed it. Obviously there are penalties to exceeding it, but it's not that we go into a room and say, 'it has to be a certain dollar number.'"