Red Sox non-tender Bryan Holaday, keep everyone else

The Red Sox will not tender a contract to Bryan Holaday ahead of tonight's deadline, allowing the backup catcher to become a free agent.

There's no surprise in the actual decision to let Holaday go. This is around the time we'd be surprised to not hear Fernando Abad's name coming up had the Red Sox not already made it clear they were going to retain the much (and perhaps wrongly) maligned lefty reliever.

When it comes to Holaday, though, there was never really any question that the Sox would pass. Holaday hasn't really done much at any point in his major league career, but struggled to match even that relatively low bar in his limited time with the Red Sox. Seeing just 35 plate appearances in 14 games, Holaday hit to a .500 OPS in August and September with the Sox. He did have two hits, a double, and a run scored in a 5-4 win over the Yankees on September 18th...and that was about it. With Sandy Leon, Christian Vazquez, and Blake Swihart already solidly ahead of him in line to play behind the plate, there was no room on the roster for him.

Holaday, in this case, is the odd man out, as the Red Sox tendered contracts to every other player not signed into 2017 on their roster. Some of those are only interesting in whether they end up on longer deals before the offseason is over--Mookie Betts, anyone?--while for others there's some real questions with how the Red Sox will handle them. In particular, players like Roenis Elias and Heath Hembree who bounced back and forth between Pawtucket and Boston last year, but now find themselves out of options.

That, however, appears to be a question for later in the offseason. For now, they'll hold onto as many assets as possible.