A Red Sox franchise that’s perennially talked future might finally be living in it
Recent contract extensions for key players and a weekend sweep of the Cardinals should have Red Sox fans feeling hopeful.
COMMENTARY
The pieces are starting to fall into place. Not in a “the Red Sox kicked the tar out of their most recent opponent, so contention is imminent” sense, though 18 runs and 10 extra-base hits against the Cardinals on Sunday night certainly qualifies as the former.
In the sense that the lineup card of the 2030 Red Sox is starting to really fill out. Fill out with names that, fingers crossed, continue delivering floggings like Sunday’s.
“It was a great day for us,” Sox manager Alex Cora told reporters.
Their future, with each passing day and each landing extension, is becoming less nebulous. (As many other societal underpinnings become all the more nebulous, but we can leave that there.)
Depending on your math, the Red Sox are one of five teams with about $100 million already committed to their roster five years hence. (Toronto didn’t become the sixth on Sunday night, but Vlad Guerrero Jr. got them a lot closer.) It’s primarily due to four players, two of whom weren’t in the 2030 picture at this time last week.
Rafael Devers — $33 million in 2030, the seventh year of a 10-year deal
Garrett Crochet — $28.8 million in the fifth year of a potential six-year deal
Ceddanne Rafaela — $10.75 million in the seventh year of an eight-year deal
Kristian Campbell — $9.25 million in the sixth year of a potential 10-year deal
How far out are we? The name you think is missing from that list, Brayan Bello, isn’t. His six-year contract signed last winter only goes through 2029, with a 2030 club option for $21 million. (The Sox would owe a $1 million buyout if they decline.)
Wilyer Abreu and David Hamilton, among others, are potential free agents after the 2029 season. Kutter Crawford, Jarren Duran, and Triston Casas, after 2028. Tanner Houck, after 2027.
The Yankees are less committed, with only Aaron Judge and Max Fried inked into the next decade. The free-wheeling Phillies? Just Trea Turner, Aaron Nola, and Bryce Harper. The big-market Cubs have no one signed past 2029. The departing Cardinals, who’ll officially become Chaim Bloom’s team in the fall? No big-ticket items after 2027.
“We do what we think is best for the team, current and future,” St. Louis chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. told reporters at the team’s annual winter hype event in January, amid payroll cutting rancor. “Obviously fans have their own opinion. We’ve got wonderful fans, and they’re knowledgeable. I think a great majority of them understand what we’re doing and approve of it. Others don’t.
“There’s a time to [increase payroll] and a time to build. We’re trying to balance that so that we have the opportunity to have competitive teams every year.”
That shiver and deja vu wasn’t from the drizzle outside.
When Crochet spoke over the weekend about his $170 million extension, he mentioned the winter as well, and how “going back to [Fenway] Fest, I really felt at home right away and felt the embrace of Boston in general.” It helped him give up the shot at a potential record-breaking bonanza as a 26-year-old free agent this winter, and settle for merely the most guaranteed money for a player with four-plus years of service in MLB history.
Campbell, his Sox career so short he hasn’t even slumped yet, was more direct about his $60 million across the next eight years.
“It was just a life-changing opportunity for me and my family,” Campbell told reporters. “And I can’t pass on that.”
It’s all parasocial, of course, but that Kristian Campbell’s a good kid, isn’t he?
None of this is absolution for most of the last six years. Running a payroll reset isn’t unique to the Red Sox, even among big-market clubs, nor is it inherently a bad thing given the rules of the luxury tax and the collective bargaining agreement.
Dragging it out for most of six years and stringing along a populace by pointing to past success and playing on the everlasting hope in “the prospects” is a little closer to black hat stuff, though this remains a sport where success is so often fleeting.
Bello’s continued absence is a reminder baseball is a sport whose default is failure. (So is Duran, lest we forget how deep his early struggles were.) He’s merely another reminder, as was Jordan Montgomery — the “how did they not sign that guy?!” of spring 2024 — needing Tommy John surgery that sometimes the best deal really is the one you don’t make. Sometimes the one that everyone hated — Christian Vázquez for Abreu, say — is the one they pretend they always loved.
And sometimes, the guy you wait all winter to settle for your offer takes it. Sometimes, that can make all the difference.
That Alex Bregman went on an offensive bonanza (6 for 13, 3 doubles, home run) while Nolan Arenado was here with St. Louis was almost too on the nose. Two players the Red Sox pursued this winter for third base. Righthanded bats and offensive/defensive double threats. Veteran presences tight with a Boston keystone — Bregman to Cora, Arenado to ex-Rockies teammate Trevor Story.
Bregman was Choice A, but wanted 5-6 years, which he wouldn’t get in Boston. Arenado was Choice B. For a good bit, it had felt like that ‘B’ was as married to the 2020s Red Sox in free agency as the one on their hats.
In the end, Bregman also wanted Boston. Choice A came through, at the Red Sox’ price, and whether he’s here past this season won’t unturn the pages flipped along with his arrival.
Just about everyone there noted the different energy around Fenway for this year’s opener. It felt like it used to. There was hope the spring renewal poetry stuff. There was a celebration of the past, but it didn’t feel there to paper over the present.
It begat a messy sweep, but a sweep nonetheless. With, in the middle, the sort of roster-fusing comeback win — two in the ninth, more heroics from the white-hot Abreu in the 10th — whose effect can linger.
We’ll have to see what happens if it gets into the summer, if there’s a clear need and a clear opportunity, just how “so good, so good” things are. For the first time in a long time, though? We can actually see the Red Sox future with our own eyes.
Dare I say, we might even be living in it.
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