Ben Cherington has a contract extension

Indeed, the main conclusion we can make about Cherington’s strategy as a GM in the wake of the Moncada signing—and really the last seven-plus months as a whole—is that his mantra appears to be “acquire talent first, worry about fit later.” The Red Sox were a poor offensive team halfway through 2014, and Cherington promptly acquired Cespedes, Castillo, Ramirez and Sandoval, positions be damned. We’ve yet to see how all these pieces fit together, but PECOTA projects the Sox to finish first in the majors with 795 runs scored. Maybe a veteran will be unhappy with his playing time or a prospect will be blocked for a few months, but in the grand scheme of things, the Sox can live with that if they’re beating opposing pitching into a pulp.

That mantra may come with a pretty big caveat, though: it might only, or at least mostly, apply to offensive players. As Marc Normandin at Over The Monster pointed out, the Sox spent $255.5 million to add Castillo, Ramirez and Sandoval even before the Moncada signing. Their reported $135 million offer for Jon Lester aside (and Normandin provides evidence for why that offer was likely an aberration), Cherington’s biggest splurge on pitching has come in the form of Ryan Dempster, who was signed for a cool $26.5 million back in 2013. It’s a bit early to definitively say that Cherington refuses to play in the high end of the market for starters, but the evidence is trending that way.

And hey, maybe that’s not the best way to make use of his resources. Maybe doubling- and tripling- and quadrupling-down on offense and settling for a middle-of-the-pack rotation (736 RA, per PECOTA) will prove to be Boston’s undoing. If so, we’ll all look back and criticize Cherington for building only half of a team.

But thanks to the construction of a monster offense and a monster farm system, the options at Cherington’s disposal for acquiring pitching seem limitless. Maybe he still pulls of a trade for Hamels before Opening Day. Maybe he grabs Hamels or another free-agent-to-be at the trade deadline. Maybe he goes after a higher-risk option, like a Cliff Lee, in order to avoid depleting his core; he doesn’t need to spend to get an arm.

Or, he could break character and open up the checkbook for pitching next offseason, when the top-tier starter options aren’t limited to a class of Lester and Max Scherzer. Because of young players like Bogaerts and Swihart and Betts, and now Moncada, he has the long-term financial flexibility to do so.

How he uses that flexibility is likely to make or break Cherington’s tenure. He’s got young offensive talent. He’s got one of the game’s best farm systems. He’s got more financial freedom coming in the near future. And it’s becoming pretty clear that he has a plan.

There are many valid paths to roster construction, and there have been plenty of very successful teams built on the backs of incredible pitching. But as offense, and especially power, becomes harder to find, as pitchers go down with injuries left and right and as evidence mounts that aging curves for hitters are changing, it makes sense for not just a team, but really an entire organization, to focus on offense, and particularly young offense, first. The Cubs seem to have largely taken a similar path for their rebuild, and Boston’s and Chicago’s front offices share just a bit of history.