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Pablo Sandoval regrets joining the Red Sox and leaving the Giants in 2014
"I should have stayed. I know. I learned my lesson."
Pablo Sandoval left the Giants and signed with the Red Sox in 2014, after a meeting with David Ortiz and a conversation with the team in which they made it clear that — per The Boston Globe — “they saw Sandoval as an important component in their lineup.”
In 2017, they designated Sandoval for assignment — a move that cost them a staggering $48.3 million. As then-President of Baseball Operations Dave Dombrowski said bluntly at the time: “It really came down to us feeling that we were not a better club if he was on our club at the major league level.”
The years in between were not particularly kind to Sandoval. After inking a five-year deal worth $90 million, Sandoval batted .237/.286/.360 with just 14 total homers and 59 RBIs. He played 161 games over three seasons and missed 252.
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Red Sox fans, of course, weren’t exactly gentle with Sandoval as he struggled — a new experience for a player who was a beloved star in San Francisco. Teammates with the Giants tried to warn him that the Red Sox would be a wholly new experience.
“The media and the cities are just different, and I tried to tell him that you have a really good home here,” Hunter Pence told GQ’s Joseph Bien-Kahn in a recent profile on Sandoval. “Honestly, he’ll even probably admit that he had some maturing to do, and he grew up a lot through that experience.”
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As it turns out, Sandoval readily admits that.
“We make mistakes. We can make errors. And you know, it’s part of the game,” Sandoval told Bien-Kahn. “But fans don’t realize that we are human beings. We got lifestyle. We have problems, too. We have off-the-field things. And they don’t understand that.”
Sandoval added that he thought about quitting baseball completely in 2016 (presumably, the idea of missing out on roughly $50 million coaxed him back).
“I should have stayed [in San Francisco]. I know. I learned my lesson,” Sandoval told Bien-Kahn. “But I’m happy I went through it, man, because I kept my eyes open and learned a lot of things.”
When Sandoval was released, the Red Sox said he went through “private-type” family issues that hurt his play and affected his shape without expanding.
Still, Sandoval said he never lost his love for the game. He is now playing in the Liga Mexicana de Beísbol, where he plans to play baseball “until my wife tell me or my kids tell me, ‘Dad, stop!’”
“It’s one of the things that I still do with love and passion because that’s the way they teach me when I was young,” Sandoval said. “People don’t realize that when you lost that, it’s the time to walk away. But I’m never gonna lose that, because I love this.”
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