Are the Red Sox the favorites to sign (re-sign) Jon Lester?

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Henry was particularly emphatic about a study showing the costs of signing players over 30 to long-term deals. “To me,” Henry told me, “the most important thing this study shows is that virtually all of the underpaid players are under 30 and virtually all the overpaid players are over 30. Yet teams continue to extravagantly overpay for players above the age of 30.” I asked Henry to compare the Sox’s approach to that of the New York Yankees, who spent $500 million in the [2013] off-season. “It is a wildly different approach,” he said. “We haven’t participated in this latest feeding frenzy of bidding up stars.”

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P.S. Just after I hit “publish,” the Boston Globe‘s Nick Cafardo reported that the Red Sox have offered Lester a six-year contract worth between $110 million – $120 million. This isn’t an overpay and likely won’t seal the deal, but I choose to interpret it optimistically as a sign that Henry, having intuited my logic, is psy

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