Red Sox agree to 1-year, $17.5 million contract with third baseman Rafael Deversas reported by ESPN’s Jeff Passan (Via Twitter). While this avoids an arbitration hearing on Devers’ final-season eligibility, it doesn’t extend the team’s dominance over the All-Star slugger. He will become a free agent next offseason.
Devers, 26, has established himself as one of the top hitters in the American League over the past few years, batting .292/.352/.532 in 108 of 2,228 at-bats since 2019. doing. , he was named to the pair of All-Star teams and won the Silver Slugger Award.
A long-term contract extension with Devers has been a priority for the Boston front office for some time, but a significant gap remained between the two. The length of this offseason. You can imagine that the rejuvenated trend of contract terms reaching or even exceeding his decade made Devers think even more about what he could get in an open market environment.
That said, there is still plenty of time for the Red Sox to close the gap in negotiations. The fact bodes well for the negotiating situation, to some extent. It also frees both parties to focus negotiations solely on Devers’ free agency season.
A long-term deal of that nature often ends up being discussed in spring training, but given Devers’ importance to the Red Sox and the dwindling clock, there’s something available for the front office to try to work out. It certainly makes sense to take advantage of every moment.. Boston ostensibly waited until last spring to discuss a long-term deal. xander bogaerts However, they only made an unrealistic one-year extension offer. They revealed they were confident in their ability to ultimately keep Bogaerts until the final day when he agreed to an 11-year, $280 million contract with the Padres. Indeed, one would imagine that Soxbra would want to avoid a similar order to Devers, who is four years younger than Bogaerts and well-placed in free agency.
More coming.