Don’t overthink this one, friends.
Welcome back to Smash Or Pass, our offseason series in which we examine various free agents and trade targets to determine whether they make sense for the Red Sox. Next up, a third baseman you may have some opinions on.
While the internet has frayed the idea of a shared reality, there are some things that most everyone still agrees on. Garlic and onions? They smell great when you cook’em. Ana de Armas? Attractive. The final season of Game of Thrones? Awful. Soup? Great. And Alex Bregman, the subject of this piece? Kind of a douche. The Red Sox are expected to pursue him nonetheless. The question is: Should they?
Come Opening Day, Bregman six years removed from his last true bang-bang season with the Astros, in which he hit 41 homers and had a 58.2 FanGraphs WAR on offense, one year after putting up 51.2 in the same category. His production cratered in 2020 and 2021 once he stopped knowing what pitch was coming, but he rebounded in 2022 for a decent 23.7 offensive WAR season, eroding to 18.2 in 2023 and 10.7 in 2024. He’s not a superstar by any means, but he’s a useable baseball player, with good defese, for now. So: Smash or Pass?
The Smash Case: You Need Baseball Players, Especially Ones That Can Field
The less said about the Astros cheating scandal the better, mostly because it’s so long ago now as to not be relevant to this offseason. No one is expecting 41 homers; Bregman has logged 23, 26 and 25 over the last three years, along with similar (but higher) numbers of doubles over the same period. The righty, who apparently idolized Ted Williams, would likely be more of a doubles hitter at Fenway, which is always appreciated.
The defense, of course, is a huge part of this, because Rafael Devers shouldn’t be playing third base anymore and Bregman could slide into his position with above-average defense and offense and generally solidify a lot of things around there. Assuming the team doesn’t actually sign a superstar, a player like Bregman could do a lot to help the Sox at, hopefully, a decent cost. Wouldn’t it be nice not to worry about every ball smoked to the hot corner? I think so.
The Pass Case: Love Is Temporary, Hate is Forever
The case against Bregman is also pretty simple: Fuck that guy!
Along with Jim Crane, Bregman was the most visible deflector of the Astros’s cheating despite having been caught dead to rights and, thanks to MLB’s wackadoodle decision to give all the Astros players immunity for their honestly, didn’t have to face any real punishment. (Among those actually punished were Alex Cora, of course.) Here’s Bregman in his natural element, being a dope:
Was it a long time ago? Sure. I still hate it. I know many baseball players would do the same thing — they had a whole team of ‘em in Houston — but I don’t care. Bregman has become the poster child for the cheating, to me, in a way Jose Altuve hasn’t, not leastwise because he was and remains a much better player than Bregman, and outside of 2020, didn’t see a huge dip in stats from which he had to scramble to recover. They were both feasting on stolen signals, sure, but Altuve knew how to hunt without them.
Even if that’s all ancient history, the “new” Bregman’s offensive production fell for the third straight year entering his age-31 season, and a continued decline would quickly make him a glove-first player for Boston, which they could obviously still use, but glove-first players aren’t likely to cost what Bregman’s likely to cost.
The Verdict: The Heart Wants What It Wants. It Also Doesn’t Want What It Doesn’t Want. Pass!
While he could actually be fairly helpful, I’d rather a drink battery acid smoothie than watch Bregman on the Red Sox. It’s for that reason I fear that it’s gonna happen, but I can hold out hate. I mean hope. And hate.