Alex Bregman has an upcoming opt-out in his contract but he is willing to talk with the Red Sox about sticking around longer. “I always tell the team — and Alex directs me to tell them — we’re always open to any conversation,” Bregman’s agent Scott Boras said to Tim Healey of The Boston Globe. “Any player who plays well somewhere, it’s something that’s important for the team and important for the player. It’s an additive.” Boras also mentioned that Bregman and his family have been happy with their time being in Boston so far.
It’s not especially surprising that Bregman and Boras would be open to a long-term offer. While Boras clients have a reputation for being averse to extensions, that’s normally for early-career players who don’t want to give up future earning power by delaying their path to free agency. In Bregman’s case, he already reached free agency after last season. He didn’t quite get the long-term deal he was looking for, so he pivoted to a short-term pact. He and the Sox signed a three-year deal with a $120MM guaranteed, though with notable deferrals that knocked the net present value closer to $90MM, with opt-out chances after each season.
The goal in signing a contract of that nature is to bank some high earnings on an annual basis while still maintaining the ability to get a larger guarantee down the line. The Bregman situation has a lot of parallels with that of Matt Chapman, another Boras client. Chapman also found the offers lacking in his first foray to free agency, settling for a three-year, $54MM deal with the Giants. His first season in San Francisco was going well enough that they didn’t want him to return to free agency, so they signed him to a six-year, $151MM deal in September of last year.
Bregman would presumably be happy with a similar sequence of events playing out for him and he has mostly done his part so far. By all accounts, he has been a positive force in taking on a clubhouse leader role on a roster with plenty of young players. He has also hit .299 /.385/.553 for a 158 wRC+ this season, his best offensive showing in years. He’s been out of action for about a month due to a quad strain but should be back in the not-too-distant future. Manager Álex Cora recently said Bregman would likely stay on the IL through the All-Star break, per Healey.
Given his contributions on and off the field, the Sox are naturally happy with Bregman as well. Chief baseball officer Craig Breslow recently discussed the matter with The Greg Hill Show on WEEI. Breslow declined to get into specifics on the contract negotiations but heaped praise on Bregman and expressed an openness to having future talks. “What I’m very comfortable saying is Alex has been everything we could have asked for both on the field,” Breslow said, “but also in the clubhouse from a leadership standpoint. Not just in the way he’s helped younger players and our staff but in the ways that he’s helped me and many of us in the front office. And so right now while we’re focused on doing everything we can to get him back on the field as quickly as possible, when the right time comes to have those conversations, very, very confident that we will.”
When Bregman first signed, it was fair to wonder if it was going to be a short-term arrangement. The Sox had Rafael Devers at third, signed for years to come. Bregman could have played second base for a year, opted out and signed elsewhere.
Much has changed since then, of course. The Sox moved Devers to a designated hitter role and put Bregman at his natural third base position. That appeared to sour the relationship between Devers and the club, which eventually led to him getting flipped to the Giants earlier this month.
That trade blew a big hole in the Boston lineup but it also freed up a lot of spending capacity, with Devers still owed about $250MM at the time of the swap. The Sox also took on Jordan Hicks and the roughly $30MM remaining in his deal but they nonetheless opened up a lot of money that was previously tied to Devers.
In the wake of that swap, the baseball world immediately began speculating if the Sox pivot to locking up Bregman with that money. That seems to be a distinct possibility, though the two sides will have to agree on a price point.
In the winter, Bregman apparently got long-term offers of $156MM from the Astros and around $170MM from the Tigers, though the latter would have come with some amount of deferred money. Bregman was reportedly looking for something around $200MM but couldn’t quite get there, which is why he accepted the short-term deal with the Sox.
Getting offers in that range again may be enough to get it done. If Bregman were offered something around $160MM on a new deal, he and Boras could argue that he hit the $200MM target, when factoring in this year’s $40MM salary. That doesn’t account for the deferrals lowering the net present value of that salary, but that’s generally the point of deferrals, to mask the true value of a contract.
Perhaps the two sides will start talking again as Bregman’s potential opt-out looms. If the Sox want Bregman locked up for the long term, they might want to get it done while he’s under contract, like the Giants did with Chapman. The Sox could always re-sign him in the offseason but then they would face competition from other clubs. In the meantime, Bregman will focus on getting healthy for a second half push.
Marcelo Mayer has largely been covering third base in Bregman’s absence but he has also started dabbling at second base, as Nate Eaton has played third, with Kristian Campbell having been recently optioned to the minors. Campbell has been playing some first base on the farm and could be a candidate to slide over there if Bregman is the long-term third baseman, though Triston Casas will be back from his injury next year. The DH spot is now open with the Devers trade though the Sox also have a crowded bunch of outfielders spilling into that spot.
Photo courtesy of Eric Canha, Imagn Images
