Big money may lead to X-it
Huge new deals leave Bogaerts no choice but to opt out
Don’t panic. Xander Bogaerts wants to be here. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have asked agent Scott Boras to negotiate him a contract days after the 2019 season had already started. And he wouldn’t have accepted a deal that was clearly paying him less than market value just months before hitting free agency as a 26-year-old superstar in his prime.
That said, the Red Sox are in some trouble here.
Since Bogaerts signed his teamfriendly extension that pays him $20 million a year through 2025 (with a $20-million team option that can vest with 535 at-bats for 2026), shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr. signed a $340-million extension with the San Diego Padres and, on the eve of Opening Day, shortstop Francisco Lindor signed a $341million extension with the New York Mets.
If you think it’s a coincidence that Lindor got $1 million more than Tatis, think again.
It’s not that Lindor must be a petty child who needs to be told he’s better than the other guy, even if it’s less than one third of 1% better. This is just the way it works in baseball. If Player A gets X dollars, equivalent Player B isn’t going to sign for anything less.
This is what Mookie Betts was talking about when he was still in Boston and constantly getting asked if he’d take a hometown discount to stay with the Red Sox.
No, he wasn’t going to do that. Why? He believed in setting the market. There’s a lot of pressure from the players’ union being put on the game’s top players to sign for as much, or more money than other equivalent players before them. That’s how the players continue to see their salaries increase each year.
That’s not pure greed. It’s just fairness.
Until the pandemic, the owners were watching their clubs take in record profits while the value of their franchises continued to multiply on the backs of lucrative local TV deals. Yeah, yeah, they’re all making too much money. But what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If owners keep making more money, players believe they deserve the same treatment.
Sure, the greed could end up ruining the entire sport. We’re already seeing it with the elimination of a huge group of minor league organizations as teams realize they can make more money by taking over total control of the minor leagues, but that’s a story for another day.
Today, the Red Sox need to be worried about Bogaerts, because the one part of his contact that made Boras comfortable advising him to sign it was an opt-out clause after the 2022 season.
“The real key of all of this was trying to get the opt-out involved where he can get a chance to look at the team a few years down the road,” Boras said at the time. “Plus, he’s so young. He’s going to be a 29-year-old free agent. Ninety percent of the free agents are 30 or above. He will be 29 because he’s so young.”
How on earth is the biggest agent in baseball going to advise a client who has been an MVP candidate to avoid free agency and stay under contract at $20 million a year when his peers are making $34 million a year or more?
Answer: he’s not. And unless Bogaerts really falls apart in the next two seasons, there’s little question he’s going to initiate the opt-out process. At that point, the Sox will either need to restructure his deal — something they should be able to do considering all the money they’ve saved the last two years and their limited long-term commitments — or once again risk losing a franchise player.
The Sox might be able to survive the Mookie Betts fiasco. It’s not going to be easy. They need to start winning, and soon. Betts needs to stop dominating in Los Angeles.
But if the Sox lose Betts and Bogaerts in their prime, that’s a pair of sins that won’t be easy to get away with.
Red Sox manager Alex Cora was wearing a pair of Lindor’s cleats to celebrate his fellow Puerto Rican’s big contract on Thursday. But Cora is also keenly aware of what that means for his own shortstop’s future.
“I love my shortstop,” Cora said.
“I’m proud of my shortstop. And I’m glad I’m going to put him in the fourth spot and he’s going to play short for us hopefully for a long, long time.
“He made a decision two years ago to get the deal done. I think the decision was the right one for both sides. Like I told him in Seattle that day, ‘You have a chance to be the greatest shortstop in the history of the Boston Red Sox.’ The way he goes about his business, he will be. We’re very proud of him. Very happy. You look around and obviously there are some great ones and there are going to be some free agents. But we have our shortstop and we love our shortstop.” For two more years.
After that, it’s up to Bogaerts how badly he wants to stay with the Red Sox, or up to the Red Sox how badly they want him to stay.
Their recent track record with star players doesn’t provide a lot of reason for optimism.