It happened again

Xander is gone, Red Sox star leaves Boston for San Diego

Doesn’t it feel like we’ve done this before?

They say the textbook definition of insanity is doing something twice and expecting different results. The Red Sox have now taken multiple homegrown star players and, through various means, sent them packing. The circumstances have all been different, but the end result, the reality, is the same. And wow does it sting.

Late last night word broke that Xander Bogaerts was leaving the Red Sox for the San Diego Padres, with whom he’d sign a massive 11 year, $280 million contract. Despite reports earlier in the day saying the two sides had momentum towards a deal, the Red Sox never got close. The Boston Globe reported the Red Sox closing offer to be six years, $160 million.

That, in case you have trouble counting, is $120 million less than what San Diego offered. The more math-astute of you will notice that in terms of Average Annual Value, the deals are actually pretty similar. And in fact, the Red Sox deal comes in at a higher AAV than does the Padres’. But, and forgive me for getting technical here, who gives a crap?

The Red Sox were blown out of the water here. Hugely. Bigly. Other non-wordsly.

Now comes the confusing part, so stick with me here. The Padres offer was nuts. Crazypants town. And the Red Sox had no business matching or even exceeding it. That doesn’t get them off the hook for their glaring mistake though. The Red Sox, you might recall, had Xander Bogaerts under contract, knew he had an opt-out that he was going to use, and had tons of time to address all of that. And, most importantly, this time was all before the market went crazy, and before the Padres decided to unburden their heirs of hundreds of millions in inheritance.

The Red Sox had ample opportunity to make their best offer, but as with Betts, as with Lester, they waited too long. Betts is a fresher wound, but Lester is probably the best analogy, a homegrown star who wanted to stay in Boston and would have probably taken the team’s best offer or even a worse version of it had it been offered previously. Had the Red Sox offered the six year, $160 million to Xander during last spring training there is zero chance he even hits the market.

So lesson not learned. And now the Red Sox get to watch Xander in a Padres uniform for the next 11 years. Also, more germane to this, they need a shortstop for the first time since 2013.

Also, they now have Rafael Devers to deal with. Are they going to lowball him too? Are they going to wait too long to make a reasonable and fair offer to their last remaining young star? History says they will. But we shall see.

Also, who is going to play shortstop? Is it really going to be Trevor Story with Christian Arroyo at second? Because I can’t imagine that is going to go over well with, well, anyone. But if they’re going to go after Carlos Correa or Dansby Swanson I have bad news: the price just went up.

There is so much more to say about this, but it’s 12:30 am now and I need to go to bed. I’ll finish with this. This hurts. As a Red Sox fan who isn’t yet over Mookie leaving, I’m honestly not sure how many more of these I can take.