He’ll be good for the team this year, that’s for sure. Then what?
Alex Bregman isn’t a perfect baseball fit on the Red Sox, but it’s closer than it is far. He’s set to play second base but should obviously switch to third once Rafael Devers and Alex Cora, Bregman’s sensei, get comfortable enough to sort that business out, hopefully sooner rather than later. Bregs is the sort of consistently good veteran presence the Sox have lacked since Xander Bogaerts left for more Orsillian pastures, and at least for this season, having him out there should be a gas.
But what then? In his introductory press conference, Bregman said that he was happy to be with the Sox because they’re pointing in the right direction, which implies that he plans to stick around for the full three years of the deal he signed. And he might. I’m just hesitant to take a victory lap for a contract that a) has an unseemly $20 million deferred every year of it and, more importantly, b) has opt-outs at the end of each season. To put it bluntly, I don’t love a deal where, in the best-case scenario, the player bolts after one season by design.
You might be, and probably are, the other guy, but I reject any suggestion that this deal is a home run for the Red Sox unless your tap water dispenses John Henry’s Kool-Aid. This is why Henry’s cigar-smoking stunt gave off such loser energy. The best case for the Bregman contract isn’t that he reverts to trash can/wall-banging form; it’s that he settles it at 70 percent of that, which, coincidentally, is right around where his contributions wouldn’t necessarily earn the Sox anything useful. It’s a Catch-22 in which the Sox can win, but not win big, nor for very long, and the carnage is already starting:
Imagine if Arenado was traded there lol
For many of you, the real question is whether the Bregman deal is better than it is bad, and my answer is that of course it is. I’m a hater, not a moron. In the unlikely event of a 2013 redux, he’s our Jake Peavy (complimentary), but that’s just it: I have a hard time seeing how this deal stands any test of time unless Bregman is just above-average as usual, in which case, fine, but it means the Sox still have plenty of work to do if they want to win it all. Judging by the ashes on Henry’s carpet, I don’t suspect that work is in the offing. They’ve substituted being good enough for being great, and they’re congratulating themselves for the trouble. It is, I repeat, loser behavior.
If this was 1999, it would all feel much different. I know because I was there, but it’s not, and it doesn’t. It’s not a novelty for the Red Sox to sign star players, or it at least it shouldn’t be. The only thing to celebrate right now is that the Red Sox are unlikely to be pathetic in 2025, a year, after which they have no control over neither recent star signing in Bregman nor Garrett Crochet, their true offseason prize. How is this supposed to inspire confidence? I’m legitimately asking. It has lit a fire under a lot of fan’s asses, mine included, but at this point I’m far less excited about what’s next, and far more worried that I’m gonna get burned.