Red Sox fans have absolutely no right to ever even bring up payroll. We won the '04 and '07 World Series due in large part to this system that favors us over all but a handful (at best) of teams. Pedro, Schilling, Damon, Manny, Lowell, Beckett, Mastsuzaka, Foulke, and Drew all came to Boston either because their old teams couldn't afford them anymore, knew they wouldn't be able to re-sign them once they hit free agency, or because we simply outbid everyone else for them once they were free agents.