Jon Lester, Mookie Betts and now Xander Bogaerts.
While John Henry, Tom Werner and rest of the Red Sox ownership group have been able to bring four trophies to Boston since purchasing the club in 2002, they’ve now thrown almost as many daggers into the backs of their most beloved franchise icons.
In the earliest hours of Thursday morning, when most team executives had packed their bags and hopped on planes to get back home after MLB’s Winter Meetings had finished, the Red Sox received some franchise-altering news.
Xander Bogaerts, who has played more games at shortstop than anybody in the club’s 100-plus-year-old history, had agreed to an 11-year, $280-million deal to join the San Diego Padres.
There, he’ll be a perfect fit.
He’ll be a mentor to help nurture some of the talented young players who have been lacking leadership and World Series pedigree. He’ll be a bridge who connects young players to old, and Spanish-speaking players to the English-speaking. He’ll be an everyday shortstop who rarely makes mistakes, runs the bases well, hits for power, hits for average and hits in the clutch. He’ll stand up in front of his locker when things are going poorly and answer questions so the others won’t have to. He’ll sign autographs and visit sick children in hospital beds.
This is who he is, and the Red Sox know it better than anybody.
Too well, perhaps.
It was Bogaerts’ best quality, his genuine ability to connect with people, that the Red Sox wanted to exploit.
Players and coaches in the clubhouse, fans in the stands, ushers and security guards in the stadium and anybody else in the community who happened to spend a little bit of time with Bogaerts over the years knew that he genuinely enjoyed himself in Boston. He loved every part of it.
He never wanted to leave, and he made that clear over and over, with his words and with his actions.
Before 2019, when Bogaerts was entering his last season before free agency and was still without a contract, he went to the most powerful agent in baseball and told him to get a deal done. He’d take less money, but he wanted to be in Boston long-term.
His agent, Scott Boras, obliged, but under one condition: the Sox include an opt-out clause that lets Bogaerts test the market again at 30 years old, just in case he had gotten a lot better, and just in case the Red Sox didn’t want to pay him for it.
Bogaerts did get better. A lot better. And the Red Sox never paid him for it.
They paid him $85 million combined over parts of 10 seasons, including $20 million a year in his final three, but when top shortstops across the game were making close to $30 million annually and Bogaerts’ offensive production out-paced them all, that didn’t seem to register with the guys writing the checks on Jersey Street.
They lowballed him during spring training, reportedly offering him just one more year as an extension to his original deal, one that would’ve paid him $90 million over the next four years.
Was it a competitive offer? Just ask the Padres; nine months later, they tripled the $90 million, then added $10 million on top.
The least-surprised person out there is probably the shortstop himself.
Bogaerts was there in 2013 and 2014 with Lester. He had seen it with Betts, several times over. The writing was on the wall that the same thing would happen to him, too.
After Game 161, a rainy Tuesday in early October, Bogaerts swatted a game-winning grandslam in the last inning, then said it felt like fate.
It felt like a perfect sendoff.
The next day, Bogaerts played his last game in a Red Sox uniform.
Did he think he’d be back in 2023? He couldn’t say. But he said something that ought to stick in the minds of Red Sox fans (and owners) for a long, long time.
“This place has given me so much, but obviously I’m in a different place now than I was when I was younger,” he said. “I’ve grown so much. I’ve learned so much. That came with experience, by seeing a lot of stuff with my teammates and being around the game in general, knowing your abilities, knowing what you’re capable of.
“I feel like now, as a player I have a better understanding than I did when I was 25, 26, trying to see what type of player you are at that point.”
In other words, the wide-eyed kid who fell in love with playing baseball at Fenway Park every night would’ve done anything to play there forever.
But a decade in the business had hardened him. Watching what happened to his friends wasn’t lost on him.
“I understand it, but I’ve seen it happen with my teammates,” he said. “I’m not saying I’m prepared for it, but I’ve seen it happen before. It’s tough, it really is, but I have seen it.”
If Bogaerts stays in San Diego for the duration of his 11-year contract, he’ll end up with more seasons for the Padres than he played with the Red Sox. He’ll need a great run in his 30s to make the Hall of Fame, but it’s certainly possible, and just as possible he’ll choose the navy cap over the red one.
He’ll reunite with Padres play-by-play man Don Orsillo, who tweeted a picture of the two of them shortly after the contract was announced early Thursday morning, and he’ll get to play in the sunshine and warm weather, a real treat for a kid from Aruba who, like the rest of us, hated Boston weather in April.
Chances are, we’ll look back in 11 years and say that $280 million was a lot of money, probably too much, and it’ll be difficult for Bogaerts to perform well enough over the duration of the deal for it to be totally worth it.
On paper, that is.
In every other way, the Padres will get exactly the man they’re paying for.
Just ask the Red Sox.
