The Yankees made clear they’re back. Will the Red Sox follow them?

Red Sox

New York’s decision to trade for Juan Soto would have caused Boston to make a similar move in the past.

Juan Soto figures to make at least $30 million this season with the Yankees, his last before free agency. Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

COMMENTARY

As the baseball offseason approached the Winter Meetings last week, frozen in its now-common state of waiting on the big free agents, I was struck by one big question.

Are the Yankees OK?

We’ll get to the Red Sox, of course, but it’s not like we’ve missed much of anything. And to be clear with New York, it was less a concerned wellness check than a quick glance around the room, seeking to confirm someone else was seeing the same insanity I was.

The steadfast refusal to move on from either manager Aaron Boone or general manager Brian Cashman. Hal Steinbrenner, the man making that decision, last month repeating his spring declaration that “a team shouldn’t need a $300 million payroll [to win].”

Cashman, declaring about Giancarlo Stanton that “he’s going to wind up getting hurt again more likely than not because it seems to be part of his game.” Which is hard to argue, but questionable to say out loud when Stanton shares an agent with highly sought Japanese starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

The trash talk, at least, felt traditionally Yankee. (Cashman, on cue, walked it back.) Loyalty after an 82-win season, with a championship drought closing on its quinceañera, sure didn’t. Austerity talk from ownership absolutely didn’t, nor did taking Alex Verdugo off Boston’s hands.

Trading for Juan Soto sure does. It’s the most aggressively Yankee move since they gave Gerrit Cole $324 million in 2019. Shipping out five players, including Bishop Hendricken/Boston College product Michael King and highly regarded pitching prospect Drew Thorpe, for one season of Soto (and defense-first OF Trent Grisham) is . . . strong.

But it feels so Bronx Baseball.

“The future is always now,” Cashman told reporters Thursday. “We understand that it’s a possible short-term situation. I know he’s going to make our team significantly better.”

Not in the outfield, where Soto is bad and 32-year-old Aaron Judge now likely shifts to the more physically demanding center field. (They’ll look much, much better next to each other in the lineup.) But that’s, to borrow a Tom Werner phrase, what “full throttle” looks like.

“[Trading for Soto] is something [Hal’s] father would do,” an anonymous executive told the New York Post. “Just say screw it.”

George Steinbrenner’s flaws abounded, but flexing payroll chasing a better on-field product was never an issue. Nor was it one for two decades in Boston, which regularly reacted in pursuit of (and to keep within distance) its rivals to the southwest.

We can keep dreaming those days could be back. At least until Yamamoto signs elsewhere.

To be clear, there are a lot of directions new baseball boss Craig Breslow could go to field a genuine major-league starting staff. Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery are your top-level options. (No, I didn’t forget Shohei Ohtani . . . a man who so values privacy he won’t name his dog publicly is not coming to this fishbowl.) Marcus Stroman and Lucas Giolito lead a second-addition tier, with Seth Lugo (reportedly a Sox interest) among many others.

But Yamamoto is the name if we’re wish casting, both about elite players again donning home jerseys at Fenway Park and returning to a time when “the best rivalry in sports” wasn’t just hollow marketing speak.

He might cost $300 million, so suffice to say there are risks and other routes to contention. That’s the undercurrent of all this superpower talk: Thirteen years after the elder Steinbrenner’s death, money still matters, but playoff-expandin’ Rob Manfred has ensured it’s never bought so little.

Dreaming, however, is allowed. It’s especially allowed when Fenway Sports Group might be weeks away from buying professional golf.

Yamamoto is, with Ohtani’s pitching future in doubt, the only arm in free agency where the sky truly is the limit. Winner of Japan’s last three Cy Young awards, the Sawamura. Just 25 years old, never posting an ERA as a professional any higher than 2.35. Untested in the US, with its five-man rotations and different baseball, but he looked plenty good in this spring’s World Baseball Classic.

My fellow oldheads, I suspect, are already thinking about Matsuzaka Mania. Oh, the gyroball talk. An out-of-this-world payout for the time, for a great-in-Japan pitcher who ended up underwhelming stateside.

None less than Pirates GM Ben Cherington, a key part of the Sox baseball ops back in 2006-07, aren’t worried. (“He’s been an outstanding performer on the world stage,” he told The Athletic of Yamamoto, further outlining just how much more data is available today to analyze.) I’ll still call it an absolutely fair note, given Matsuzaka was also young (26) and heralded (one Sawamura, four strikeout titles) back then.

I know the Red Sox don’t need to sign the No. 1 free agent to win in 2024, and whether they do is admittedly not entirely up to them. The Athletic reported Wednesday that Yamamoto is down to seven “serious suitors,” and the Red Sox weren’t among the five (Yankees, Giants, Dodgers, Blue Jays, Mets) explicitly named.

But they could. And man, I wish they would.

The lizard brain wants what it wants, and mine misses the days of baseball’s two superpowers heaving stacks of money and potshots at each other. Of truly fearsome lineups and stacked staffs. Of questions about ownership’s genuine commitment to winning being easily laughed off by pointing at a payroll chart or the standings.

It feels trite and simple to think of it that way, but that’s the depth to which plenty analyze this stupid stuff. The Celtics paid Jaylen Brown, and they’re going to pay Jayson Tatum even more relatively soon. The Bruins paid David Pastrnak and, before him, Brad Marchand.

The Red Sox? They paid plenty in their golden era, and they paid Rafael Devers last winter. But only after they traded Mookie Betts and let Xander Bogaerts walk. The former was better than letting him walk for nothing. (Barely, as it turned out.) The latter, I suspect, will age much better.

But take it from a person who’s spent many a professional minute trying to explain the rationality in those moves: People don’t care. People like stars. They like big names, real big names, and they’re used to watching them have BOSTON (or 12) on their clothes.

In New England, even our announcing booths are stacked with Hall of Famers. Winning forgives just about anything, however the construction goes getting there. But stars forgive plenty along the way, and outside of Devers — who’s still frankly growing into those shoes — the Sox have been lacking in that department for quite a while.

“I . . . think I have the willingness and the conviction to make the tough decisions necessary to succeed in this role,” Breslow told reporters at his introduction last month.

Initial signs are he works quietly, and there are far too many pieces still on the board to be critical. But as we digest New York stating its intentions in headline type, our wait to see him prove that conviction continues.