Sources: Rafael Devers, Red Sox finalizing 11-year, $331M extension

Third baseman Rafael Devers and the Boston Red Sox are finalizing an 11-year, $331 million contract extension, sources told ESPN, a deal that will keep the 26-year-old star from reaching free agency this year and constitutes the longest and largest guarantee ever given by the franchise.

The agreement, which is expected to be signed Wednesday night, comes in the midst of an arduous winter for the Red Sox, who lost longtime shortstop Xander Bogaerts to San Diego in free agency nearly three years after trading star right fielder Mookie Betts to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Offering Devers to a deal far longer than Manny Ramirez’s eight-year pact and more than 50% larger than David Price’s $217 million contract was enough for the two-time All-Star to accept shepherding the Red Sox out of last place in the American League East and back to contention.

The contract is expected to fold in the $17.5 million salary Devers agreed to earlier this week to avoid arbitration and extend another 10 years beyond that, sources said.

Inside the Red Sox’s free agency plans after Xander Bogaerts

The ownership group fired Dombrowski before the end of the 2019 season, less than a year after winning the World Series, and mandated the team cut salary in order to reset the luxury tax penalties. In came Bloom—whom Boston hired from the Tampa Bay Rays—with a vision of creating a Dodgers-style of sustained success, spending big money on star players while consistently developing top prospects to fill out the lineup.

It’s pretty funny saying they want a “Dodgers-style of sustained success” when the Red Sox traded Mookie Betts to the Dodgers who signed him. You keep your young superstar players and get them locked up early, you don’t let them dangle until they get close to free agency. (Also see Bogaerts.)

According to multiple sources, Boston’s ownership group did not mandate that Bloom trade Betts to get under the luxury tax. But that is what Bloom ultimately decided to do, with an eye toward increasing the Red Sox’s options in the future. The team traded Betts and Price to Los Angeles for Alex Verdugo, Jeter Downs and Connor Wong. And Betts eventually signed a 12-year, $365 million contract with the Dodgers—a deal he told ESPN in August that he would have accepted in Boston.

I hope Bloom likes the criticism from multiple sources in the know. I’m sure those sources aren’t owner friendly. /s

Of course, if this is true, Bloom shouldn’t be in charge.

Have we made wrong decisions in the past? Lots of them,” Kennedy said. “You can’t sit around regretting mistakes of the past. That’s not a good recipe. We respect Mookie and it’s a hard decision, but we’ve moved on.”

Sure, you “can’t sit around regretting mistakes of the past.” But, you should remember and learn from them. Repeating the same mistakes over and over don’t point to the latter.

As the team builds the roster for 2023, some within the Red Sox front office have questioned Bloom’s decision-making process, team sources told ESPN. One front-office official said Bloom’s deliberate process toward making moves—asking many people for their input before making a decision—can put the Red Sox in a position to fall behind, reacting to other teams versus setting the market.

“I think we have a culture where people can and do express directly to me when they disagree with something,” Bloom said. “We have a lot of people in the loop on transactions that we make and we have a lot of really good debate. We have a place where people can share their opinion and have it be heard.”

More anonymous sources laying the groundwork for the future.

Anyway, there is a lot of other good stuff in the article, including info about Bogaerts willingness to take an extension after Story signed.

“I’m not sure how to respond to that,” Bloom said. “I certainly think we’ve made some large commitments in the time I’ve been here. For people who would’ve liked to have seen more, that’s their right. I think a lot of circumstances under which I joined the organization really precluded that for a period of time. I would argue we would’ve been worse off certainly prior to 2021 had we listened to people who wanted to see us make a splash instead of building a good baseball team.”

It’s not about the spending for me. It’s about the right spending. A team has to properly evaluate their best young players and get them signed as soon as they can. They can’t fritter away cash on mediocity and not spend money to keep their best homegrown players.

Betts and Bogaerts should have been able to fit within the Red Sox long-term budget. Alas, they can’t go back. Now they either have to overpay to keep Devers or be doomed to repeat the same mistake, again.

Ugh.

Rafael Devers set to cash in on Red Sox’s Xander Bogaerts whiff

One big beneficiary of the free-agent largess — and particularly the $280M deal for Xander Bogaerts — is his longtime Red Sox teammate Rafael Devers. And sources say a Devers extension is Boston’s “No. 1 priority,” which never seemed true for Bogaerts.

“They have to give him whatever he wants,” one baseball exec said. “Can they really let him go too?”

Regarding Devers, Red Sox Chief Baseball Officer Chaim Boom said by text, “Our efforts are only intensifying — but it’s something we’ve really wanted to do for a while and hopefully we’ll be able to find that path.”

The Red Sox were offering Devers in the mid $200Ms after already bumping it quite a bit, but now his $300M asking price seems reasonable. After all, he’s four years younger than Bogaerts.

While we know about Boston’s spring offer to Bogaerts to add one year and $30M to make it $90M over four, they offered to bump his deal to $120M in October, and as the Boston Globe reported, they floated a deal for close to $170M at the winter meetings (about $28M a year for six years).

The risk, reward of paying a player like Rafael Devers

From a business perspective, Devers’ presence at Fenway Park would duplicate the kind of following Harper represents at Citizens Bank Park. Shirts. Tickets. Buzz. That all factors into any financial commmitment.

There is also optimism that the other nine players participating with Devers every night throughout the meat and potatoes of what figures to be a long-term relationship….

“Right now on Raffy, we are in a different position as an organization where I think our talent base — the young talent in the organization — is in a much better spot, and we are not committed in the same way financially to as many players as we were (heading into 2020),” Bloom said. “So, I can’t give a guarantee still based on that, obviously, but part of what we have been trying to do is put the organization in a position where we wouldn’t be backed into that corner.”

The Angels. The Rangers. Perhaps the Tigers. All represent cautionary tales.

Devers? Locking him up wouldn’t seem reactionary or desperate. Just smart. The kind of smart the Phillies are currently basking in.