Price to Red Sox 7 years $219 Million

[logan82]

My guess is the top payroll teams were good a year or two before they were a top payroll team. They paid for talent knowing they would have dead money and bad contracts at some point. If you remember back, the Yankees were best when they had young homegrown guts augmented by high priced vets. The dufference is they were able to keep their core players together longer and continue to augment that core for a prolonged period of time.