An albatross deal is different for each team. It’s dependent on budget and willingness of ownership to spend resources. For the Sox, A’s, $15 million is a significant chunk of payroll. The Dodgers, Yankees, Phillies, Mets - they could eat several of these. Most teams could survive this. For the Sox, current ownership will use this deal to justify not spending for a few years. The impact to the Sox is much worse because most other teams would not let one bad deal like this handcuff them (or use it to justify not spending money).
Benintendi has been awful. He would have been DFA’d if not for this deal. But he is not the only problem we have. He’s also putting up bad numbers being healthy. There are other signings we made that don’t make sense in overpaying bad talent and blocking younger guys who could get experience. Why waste $15-20 million in deals for bad FA signings? Sure you could flip them for a prospect, but what about our brass has shown they can make good trades?