The Red Sox are already crying poor

We are at the beginning of the free agent spending season and one year away from a collective bargaining fight between management and labor. This means one thing: it’s once again time for MLB owners to tell us all that they totally have a girlfriend, but you don’t know her because she lives in Canada.

Hal Steinbrenner was first out of the gate last week, when he said that it “was not fair or accurate” to assume that the New York Yankees made a profit in 2025. Now, John Henry has joined him via a leak to the media that intimated that the Sox are operating on tight profit margins and may not significantly increase payroll this offseason.

Unlike Steinbrenner, Henry did not directly address the media or the fans, of course. It has now been almost three years since he dared sullying his tongue by baring it to the unwashed masses. Nor did he even have Sam Kennedy do his dirty work for him. This time, it was simply unnamed “sources familiar with the organization’s thinking” who told MassLive’s Sean McAdam that “the Red Sox are OK going over the first CBT threshold, set at $244 million for 2026 — which would translate to them absorbing a modest financial loss” (emphasis mine, he types with a heavy sigh) but that “there’s a reluctance to incur bigger deficits.”

It goes without saying, of course, that neither Steinbrenner, nor Henry sources familiar with the organization’s thinking offered to open their books to prove that two of the most successful franchises of a publicly subsidized $12 billion industry are not profitable. In fact, when Steinbrenner was asked point blank if the Yankees lost money in 2025, he comically dodged the question, with an “I’m not going to get into our finances.” This is to be expected. MLB owners have a long and storied tradition of crying poor and then providing “just trust me, bro!” as proof.

I’ve already gone into extensive detail on the myriad ways in which American sports owners are little more than financial vampires, draining money from the players, fans, and taxpayers while providing almost no economic value of their own. So this is just a quick reminder: the most solid evidence that we have about the financial condition of MLB teams —which comes from the quarterly and annual reports of the publicly traded Atlanta Braves — shows that they are very, very profitable.

If you’re wondering how the Red Sox and Yankees can imply that they are operating at a loss while the Braves (who spent more on player payroll than the Sox in 2025) generated over $600 million of revenue this year, remember that John Henry doesn’t just have better seats than you, he has better accountants, too. It is extremely easy and common for companies to manipulate their earnings reports to suit their needs, whether by shifting the timing of certain revenue streams or creating excess “cookie jar” reserves. It’s called “earnings management” and it’s not technically fraudulent in the same way that the bratty kid in the back seat of the car isn’t technically touching his little brother when he holds his finger an inch in front of his face.

Every private company has the legal right to do this. But there’s a difference between what is right in the eyes of the law and what’s just plain right. And, unfortunately, “doing right” to an MLB owner means doing right by your 29 business partners, not the fans. Remember that the next time your NESN360 bill comes due.