10 Degrees: This is why Red Sox are unlikely to blow up roster amid another disastrous season

Dismantling a $187 million team in the middle of a season takes a special kind of disaster, one the Boston Red Sox haven't quite achieved. These aren't the Red Sox of Bobby Valentine, full of mutiny and cunning, of rogue text messages to ownership and serial disenchantment. Fractures exist, yes. They're just not on fault lines ready to break open and swallow things whole.

Yes, the issues go beyond a buxom third baseman hearting two pictures of a similarly buxom woman on Instagram when in the bathroom during the middle of the game. Pablo Sandoval became the flashpoint of this latest season gone awry this week with his cellular shenanigans, which were a bad look but nothing hundreds of other ballplayers haven't done. He learned quickly, as do all Red Sox, that the power of the magnifying glass in Boston is inversely proportionate to the size of the numbers a player puts up.

Being the scapepanda is not crushing his spirit, not yet. "Why am I going to be uncomfortable?" Sandoval said Sunday. "I don't get it." He does not want general manager Ben Cherington to blow up these Red Sox, and sources familiar with the organization's thinking say that is not an option, not at this point, nor should it be considering what it would take for that to happen.

Getting rid of Sandoval and the $87.3 million left over the 4½ years remaining on his contract or the $79.3 million for 3½ years of Hanley Ramirez would be so prohibitive that neither option is worth pursuing. The first is simply paying down the values on the deals to dump the players to teams interested in either at a more reasonable cost, and considering Ramirez remains one of the game's purest hitters and Sandoval a third baseman with a long pedigree still more than a year from his 30th birthday, the prospect of paying for either to produce elsewhere still isn't palatable to Red Sox ownership, sources said.

The other is a dump along the lines of the Carl Crawford/Josh Beckett disposal of 2012 that necessitated the inclusion of Adrian Gonzalez.

"Let's not forget how they did it," one GM said this past week. "They tied a really valuable contract to the others. You want to get rid of Hanley? Tie Mookie Betts to him."

He paused and reconsidered.

"OK, maybe not Betts," he said, "but someone of value."

The Red Sox are not yet that desperate with Sandoval. Even Ramirez, whose attitude has irked some respected members of the Red Sox's clubhouse, is not at the point of no return. Ramirez wore out his welcome in the fissured clubhouse of the 2014 Los Angeles Dodgers, according to "The Best Team Money Can Buy", a soon-to-be-released book by Molly Knight that chronicles the manifestation of a dysfunctional team worth nuking. Boston bringing him back despite his habitual bridge-burning – Ramirez was traded from the organization as a minor leaguer in part because of his tremendous ability to anger those with whom he played – hasn't exactly worked out as planned. Age doesn't always equal maturity.

As Ramirez continues to play polarizing figure and manager John Farrell faces blowback from certain corners of the clubhouse as he tries to wrangle a group still capable of going on tilt, hitting the doomsday button on this incarnation of the …

1. Boston Red Sox is not the right move – yet. Not this year, at least, with how Boston projects going forward. Even if the Red Sox finish in last place in the AL East for the third time in four seasons – "The season's not over yet," Sandoval cautioned, "so let's not worry about it" – what made them such a chic pick to recover from last year's mess isn't gone.

Betts is a burgeoning star in center field, his ridiculous week capped by a walk-double-triple-homer Sunday and a slash line now up to .277/.329/.453. He is 22. Dustin Pedroia is his steady self, Xander Bogaerts among the three best shortstops in the American League and Blake Swihart still developing but showing flashes of premier-backstop material. That's four potentially well-above-average players at the up-the-middle positions.

With Mike Napoli's awful season allowing the Red Sox to let him walk, Ramirez can move to first base and end his abomination of a trial in left field, which opens up a spot for Cuban talent Rusney Castillo to get everyday at-bats in left. Whether Swiss Army knife Brock Holt patrols right field or stays in a superutility role, he has earned regular at-bats. And David Ortiz, as long as he hits 425 plate appearances this season, will be back for what could be his final year at DH.

Granted, the Red Sox's biggest problem is their pitching, and for that they need to dip into the free-agent market, something that ownership is loath to do, as evidenced by their underwhelming bids for Jon Lester. It's simply a necessity here, no matter how inefficient the market, because the Joe Kelly experiment is nearing its end and a $100 million-plus ace-Clay Buchholz-Eduardo Rodriguez-Rick Porcello-Wade Miley rotation with some much-needed bullpen improvements will play.

Until then, the Red Sox will continue to look up in the standings at the …

2. Tampa Bay Rays and wonder, like everyone else in baseball, how they manage to take a $76 million team and make it look like something that costs three times as much with four of their five best starting pitchers on the disabled list.

A rotation of Chris Archer, Matt Moore, Alex Cobb, Jake Odorizzi and Drew Smyly might be the deepest in the major leagues. A rotation of Chris Archer, Nate Karns, Alex Colome, Erasmo Ramirez and Matt Andriese is the Rays' reality, and yet here they are, as June dawns, with a 40-31 record in an AL East that has turned out to be surprisingly competitive.

The Rays, a .500 team at home, have done the majority of their damage on the road. They're 21-12, the best record in the big leagues, and they're doing it with a lineup that Sunday hit David DeJesus in the cleanup spot and batted a 29-year-old career minor league named Joey Butler second. This is the Rays' way, plucking a minor league free agent like Butler from obscurity and letting him thrive in a culture that soldiers on with GM Andrew Friedman running the Dodgers and manager Joe Maddon the Chicago Cubs.

They find Butler, turn Logan Forsythe into the new Ben Zobrist, unleash Kevin Kiermaier in center field and witness a threat to Lorenzo Cain's Gold Glove. And with Moore likely back from Tommy John surgery this week and Odorizzi not far off with an oblique strain healing, the Rays are getting even more weapons to keep …

3. Alex Rodriguez and the Yankees in second place. While Rodriguez's story of redemption is overwrought and full of revisionism – one does not redeem himself from … himself – it is nevertheless a fascinating turn from a soon-to-be-40-year-old who had convinced himself two years ago that he needed performance-enhancing drugs to produce at all.

If this is what Rodriguez does clean – and to presume he is clean, or anyone, for that matter, is clean, is foolish considering how easily he beat MLB's drug testing last time – it is even more sad than triumphant. Because Rodriguez always has been a transcendent talent, one capable of doing things other players couldn't. And witnessing such transcendence without having to ask the question of how many of the 3,000 hits he now has came while taking PEDs would allow the celebration of a remarkable achievement without caveat.

Qualifications, unfortunately, rode shotgun with the moment, and it's appropriate A-Rod's 3,000th ended in the hands of a charlatan. What could've been simply wasn't, a sentiment …

4. Max Scherzer could well have repeated after his shoulda-been-perfect game Saturday was ruined by the elbow pad of Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Jose Tabata. This was not, as some zealots contended, an act worthy of waterboarding or losing his job or taking a fastball upside the head. It just felt cheap, like something historic was stolen by something rather unbecoming.

And, yes, what Tabata did straddled the line of unwritten rules. Bunting for a base hit to break up a no-hitter is similarly sacrosanct, and yet it's like there's this sentiment where hitters must genuflect to convention at a certain point that simply doesn't hew to logic. Yes, different situations call for different actions, but if it's a tied game in the ninth inning, the Pirates need runners and Tabata dips his elbow an inch for it to get clipped and gets away with it, that's a cheap play, sure, but a damn smart one.

So because Scherzer is throwing better than just about anybody in baseball and happens to be having a super-magical day, Tabata is supposed to turn off the instinct imbued in him through decades of playing baseball to get on base however possible? How the same play could be heady in one context and worthy of beheading in another shows how the emotion of history preys and turns people illogical. We want our history clean and simple, like being able to say …

5. Chris Sale did something only Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez have done: strike out at least a dozen hitters in five consecutive starts. Go back to his last eight starts, and Sale's numbers are superhuman: 61 1/3 innings, 29 hits, 10 walks, 93 strikeouts, four home runs and a 1.32 ERA.

Sale is one of the great bargains in baseball, under contract for another 4 ½ years at $52.8 million, with the last two seasons club options with small buyouts in case of injury. The idea of trading Sale is certainly tempting, especially with the White Sox's season barreling in the wrong direction – their minus-68 run differential is worst in the AL and better than only Philadelphia and Milwaukee – but wouldn't necessarily net as much as he's worth.

The potential surplus value on Sale's contract is so high that receiving commensurate value in a trade is almost impossible. What would the cost be for a pitcher who does what Clayton Kershaw or Felix Hernandez does at about a third the price? An organization's top four prospects? Five? More? It's so much that nearly every organization in baseball would balk at giving up so much talent for just one player, no matter how great.

White Sox GM Rick Hahn is creative and will entertain all possibilities, and executive say they plan on at least spitballing before the trade deadline. Sale is about as likely to go somewhere else as …

6. Albert Pujols, who over the last four weeks has resembled the sort of player worthy of the $240 million contract the Los Angeles Angels lavished upon him four years ago. Consider the performances in the last 28 days:

Paul Goldschmidt: .411/.547/.744 with eight home runs
Bryce Harper: .385/.500/.731 with seven home runs
Todd Frazier: .343/.373/.752 with 10 home runs
Giancarlo Stanton: .309/.380/.773 with 13 home runs
Albert Pujols: .323/.385/.717 with 12 home runs

Pujols is no longer The Machine, an unstoppable wrecking ball of a hitter who gets on base 45 percent of the time and slugs .650 for an entire season and carves his place as one of the five greatest right-handed hitters of all time. He is, if this power isn't a mirage, an unlikely but realistic threat to Barry Bonds' home run record, which didn't seem possible as Pujols limped through 2014.

With an AL-leading 20 home runs, Pujols is halfway to his seventh 40-plus-homer season. If he reaches 40, he'll end the season at 560, about 200 short of Bonds. And while the prospect of Pujols pounding that many over the next six years is slim, he does have that long left on his contract, and he will play it out. In this era of offensive paucity, a one-dimensional slugger like Pujols is of tremendous value. Maybe not $24 million a year, but enough, which is why …

7. Hector Olivera and the rest of the Cuban imports who sign what seem like huge-money deals often do end up monstrous bargains. If the cost of a marginal win really is around $7.5 million, Yoenis Cespedes could produce the entire value of his $36 million deal this year alone. According to FanGraphs' calculations, Yasiel Puig last season provided $40.5 million in value. He signed for seven years and $42 million.

Getting major league-ready players for mid-level salaries is an absolute coup, and Olivera could be the latest. He's massacring Triple-A pitching, with a pair of four-hit games, the latest of which came Friday and included a triple and a home run. Considering Justin Turner is thriving in everyday duty – he's up to .333/.401/.579 – there isn't exactly an open spot for Olivera at the moment. Soon enough, though, he'll hit his way into the major leagues, and the Dodgers will have a problem about which complaints will be met with a tiny fiddle.

After a few down years, third base is finally back with a vengeance, maybe the deepest position in baseball. Olivera will join Frazier, Josh Donaldson, Kris Bryant, Nolan Arenado, Evan Longoria, Kyle Seager, Matt Carpenter, Mike Moustakas, Adrian Beltre and …

8. Manny Machado, whose offensive prowess finally is catching up to the brilliance of his glove. And seeing as Machado is all of 22 years old – the youngest of that entire group, by the way, even greener than Bryant – that was to be expected. After another three-hit game Sunday – his fourth in his last 10 games, with three more two-hit games mixed in for good measure – Machado sat at .303/.361/.521 with his glove widely considered second only to Arenado's.

The Orioles' plus-41 run differential is third in the AL, behind Toronto – fourth-place Toronto – and Central-leading Kansas City. With Matt Wieters back catching, Baltimore is at full strength again, and any lineup with Machado, Wieters, Adam Jones and Chris Davis can do damage.

Machado's 14 home runs already have tied a career high, and 11 stolen bases are nearly double his previous best. He is evolving into a fully complete player, and someone who hits for average, power, runs well, catches the ball and wields a cannon isn't just a five-tool player. He's a superstar. And while the Orioles could use some starting-pitching help, their offense is strong enough to keep them in contention and their bullpen good enough that they won't be among the teams vying for …

9. Jonathan Papelbon's services. Which, it turns out, could be somewhat valuable. While holding onto Cole Hamels may not turn out well – one GM this week pointed to the return for David Price last year and said Hamels' contract, while reasonable for the market, makes him an even tougher sell – doing so with Papelbon almost assuredly will get the Phillies something better than they would've this offseason.

Papelbon is sporting a 1.30 ERA after allowing a run Sunday, and despite his average fastball velocity dipping to 91 mph, he's striking out more than a batter an inning and inducing more groundballs than ever. The ideal scenario, of course, is for a contender with an established closer to acquire Papelbon and keep him from reaching 100 games finished over this season and last, which would trigger a $13 million option for next year.

With the tally at 77, Papelbon is edging his way closer. A one-year, $13 million contract for an elite closer isn't the worst thing in the world – richer teams might actually consider it more desirable than giving a reliever multiple years – which makes a trade of Papelbon all the more inevitable. One place he won't be going, absent an immediate turnaround, is to the …

10. Boston Red Sox for a reunion tour. Boston might make sense if it weren't 31-40 and nine games back of the Rays, and in an AL East without a Godzilla, anything is possible. Even if Boston continues to flail, detonating this team is not the right move, and it has economics to thank for that.

Right now, the Red Sox's three highest-paid players for next season – Ramirez, Sandoval and Porcello – are playing at varying levels of stink. And yet because Pedroia is signed to a team-friendly deal, Betts and Swihart years from arbitration, Bogaerts cheap for a while to come, Eduardo Rodriguez thriving for no money, Holt the same and Wade Miley in his arb years, Boston has a nearly a third of its roster producing at high levels for remarkably depressed prices.

The bloated Yankees teams of the past were no good because their high-paid and low-paid guys were awful. So long as Boston keeps pumping out young, cheap talent, this model isn't exactly friendly on the checkbook, but it can eat bad contracts for Ramirez and Sandoval and Porcello without suffering miserably. These are the Boston Red Sox. If $60 million is flushed down the toilet, they've got another $125 million to make a team. And that presumes Ramirez, Sandoval and Porcello all will continue to underperform, which is unlikely.

Now, it's been a terrible year on the farm for the Red Sox. Their Triple-A team, with pitcher Henry Owens, shortstop Deven Marrero, infielder Sean Coyle and utilityman Garin Cecchini is a pit stop of underachievement. Only lefty Brian Johnson, the next call-up for Boston's rotation, is thriving. Their $63 million investment in Yoan Moncada has yielded a disappointing month, as has the $72 million they gave Castillo. Third baseman Rafael Devers and center fielder Manuel Margot could be stars, but they're two years away, forcing Boston to adjust on the fly.

Which, as Cherington showed two years ago, he can do well. Just because a wholesale remake worked once doesn't make it the solution. If this season continues spiraling, he'll sell off pieces – maybe someone bets on Napoli's power or Justin Masterson's ability to function as a right-handed specialist out of the bullpen or he tries to extract value from Koji Uehara or Junichi Tazawa or, if Cherington wants to get really frisky, Buchholz – and aim to make 2016 a lot more like 2013 than 2012 or 2014 or 2015.

In Boston, the sky falls with the rapidity of a brick from a building when life in reality is more like a feather. Farrell's job of mending what's broken isn't easy but is doable. Ramirez's willingness to act more like his 2013 self than the 2014 version who hijacked the Dodgers' lineup daily by coming to the ballpark unaware whether he'd be able to play is imperative, because his attitude has the ability to heal as much as it does destroy.

These Red Sox aren't lost, not yet, not like they were three years ago. That was an abject failure. This is just a mess, and messes can be cleaned up with time, patience and the knowledge that blowing things up for demolition's sake is rarely the prudent move for a team that can more than withstand a financial flop.

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