The Boston Red Sox front office can rest easy. There will be no arbitration hearings in the coming weeks.

President of Baseball Operations Dave Dombrowski made sure of that with a flurry of signings last week. He signed 12 players to contracts for the 2019 season, spending just short of $59 million to keep himself out of February hearings.

The amount the Red Sox spent on those 12 players is more than the Tampa Bay Rays have committed to their entire team for next season.

It’s the high cost of doing business for the reigning champs. The Sox have the highest payroll in baseball, far outspending their rivals in New York. Remember when we used to call the Yankees the Evil Empire? Now they’re just trying to keep pace with a Boston franchise that has won four championships in the last 15 years and has shown a willingness to spend whatever it takes to get the job done.

Sometimes, that means overspending to keep arbitration-eligible players happy.

The arbitration process can be a nasty one. The player thinks he’s worth a certain amount, and his team comes in and suggests he is not. That can lead to hard feelings that can linger into the season.

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In extreme cases, that can open up an irreparable rift between the player and team.

That happened in the NHL back in 1997. Tommy Salo, a goalie for the New York Islanders, was coming off his first full season in the league. He won 20 games for a mediocre Islanders team, and was looking for a pay raise.

Former Bruin Mike Milbury was the Isles GM at the time. He approached his role in the front office the same way he approached the game with the Bruins. He went into the corners hard and refused to back down.

So it was in the arbitration room, when Milbury highlighted Salo’s flaws in an effort to keep his salary down. Milbury was ready for the fight. So ready, legend has it that Salo broke down crying hearing his team had so little faith in him.

That was the end of Salo’s days in Uniondale. A year later Milbury had to trade him away to the Oilers, so bad was the relationship with his goalie.

You wouldn’t see that in an MLB arbitration hearing, but it’s a cautionary tale worth remembering when it comes to Mookie Betts. One of the game’s best players, Betts can be a free agent after the 2020 season. The Sox would love to keep him and build around the 26-year old American League MVP.

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That’s why Dombrowski didn’t blink an eye in giving Betts a $9.5 million raise. His $20 million salary in 2019 is the highest for a player in his second year of arbitration eligibility.

On Friday, Betts tweeted a one-word reaction to the signing: “Grateful.”

Keeping Betts, who won his arbitration hearing a year ago, happy could be the key to signing him in the future. And signing him could be the key to Boston extending its current window of success.

We’ll see if it plays out that way. Betts is a five-tool player who can do just about anything. For now, we know one thing for sure: It would’ve been very bad if the Sox made Betts feel badly by telling him about all the things he can’t do.

Tom Caron is a studio host for Red Sox broadcasts on NESN. His column appears in the Portland Press Herald on Tuesdays.


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