The Boston Red Sox have spent the first month of the season playing bad baseball, and that’s on the heels of failed contract extension talks with Xander Bogaerts.
So, it should surprise no one that there’s speculation that the Red Sox could move him this offseason.
Although there’s been nothing credible suggesting that the Red Sox are even considering that at this point, the Mookie Betts and Jon Lester experiences jaded Boston’s fanbase. The apparent chasm between the two sides in contract talks is offering some parallels to those previous situations, specifically Lester, so you can understand where the concern come from.
Sox manager Alex Cora, appearing Wednesday on WEEI’s “Merloni, Fauria and Mego”, offered his thoughts on the talk – specifically a report that a “friend” close to Bogaerts thinks he’s leaving.
“I mean it’s one of those that there’s probably a story like that in a lot of clubhouses or a lot of teams, right?” Cora said. “There’s guys, they’ve earned the right to become free agents after the season. In his situation, we got a deal done in 2019 and he has the opt out. It’s up to him. I think throughout the years -- since 2018 our DH (J.D. Martinez) was supposed to opt out the whole time, but he’s played his whole contract here for us.
“The way I see it is, he’s our shortstop, he’s the leader of our team, he’s having a pretty solid start not only offensively but defensively too. We talk every day, we don’t talk about that. I don’t know who the friend of the friend of the friend is, but I think beat writers, they have a job to do, they write their stories. Some of them have friends that manage the player’s career and they get stuff from those guys, but in my world, in our clubhouse it’s not a factor.
“You can see with him the way he’s playing, the way he’s going about it, he’s the shortstop for the Red Sox and he’s doing an outstanding job so far.”
WIth the expanded playoffs, it is far too early to write off the Red Sox. That said, things need to change – quickly – if they want to dismiss even fleeting thoughts from fans that the team might go down that all-too-familiar path and end up trading their longtime shortstop instead of signing him.
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