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Cryptic Red Sox tweet appears to celebrate reaching luxury-tax goal

Boston Globe / Getty

The Boston Red Sox Twitter account posted and later deleted an image of a reset button with the text "iykyk" on Tuesday.

"Iykyk" means "If you know, you know," and appears to be a nod to the team resetting its luxury-tax threshold penalties following Monday's trade deadline.

The Red Sox hired former Tampa Bay Rays executive Chaim Bloom as their chief baseball officer in October, tasking him with getting under the $208-million base threshold for 2020 to avoid having to pay taxes of 50% for each dollar spent over the mark. The Red Sox exceeded the mark in 2018 and 2019, but with less of a tax penalty in each season.

Bloom accomplished his goal by trading away popular superstar Mookie Betts and pitcher David Price in the offseason while brokering separate deals for Mitch Moreland, Brandon Workman, Heath Hembree, Kevin Pillar, and Josh Osich in August, but he recently admitted the trades served more than one purpose.

"Going back to February, I think I said then and would say now that the luxury tax, the CBT limit is a factor, but I think the importance of that has been kind of overplayed in the storyline that has surrounded us this year," Bloom explained Monday, according to MassLive's Christopher Smith. "It's obviously something we monitor. As I said in February, I always felt the depth and the sustainability of the talent base was a much bigger priority than that."

In trading from the team's active roster, Bloom acquired two players with big-league experience (Alex Verdugo and Nick Pivetta), seven minor leaguers, and international bonus pool money during a season in which the Red Sox sit last in the American League East with a 12-23 record.

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