BOSTON — It’s not the Rafael Devers news Red Sox fans were hoping for.
Tuesday afternoon, the Red Sox agreed to a one-year deal with Devers that will cover his final year of salary arbitration and pay him $17.5 million in 2023, as first reported by ESPN and later announced by the club.
At the very least, the team will avoid taking Devers to arbitration, which requires both sides to make arguments about why Devers deserves more or less money while a third-party arbiter decides on his contract.
And while the one-year deal doesn’t preclude the Red Sox from signing him to an extension before the season, it does repeat a familiar pattern.
The Sox have now taken Devers, Xander Bogaerts and Mookie Betts down to the wire in the arbitration process, signing all three of them to one-year deals in their final years of team control.
They were not able to work out a deal with Betts and eventually traded him to the Dodgers before his final season in 2020.
They originally signed Bogaerts to a one-year deal before his final season under team control in 2019, though they eventually signed him to an extension shortly after opening day, when Bogaerts told his agent, Scott Boras, he was willing to sign at a rate that was less than what he’d likely be paid on an open market (Boras obliged, but requested that the Red Sox include an opt-out clause, which is what led to his free agency this winter). Former president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski was still in charge at the time.
With Devers, the Red Sox have a chance to finally get this right and lock up a franchise player for the duration of his career.
But will they?
Last month, club president Sam Kennedy didn’t sound like someone who was going to relent on the way the Red Sox have done business with their stars.
“I think we need to keep the focus on what’s important and that’s playing baseball in October and winning World Series championships,” he said.
“We need to keep making the right decisions. That’s the bottom line. I would put our organization and our track record against anybody else’s in Major League Baseball, period.”
Chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom said at the Winter Meetings in December that extending Devers was a top priority, though these conversations usually happen closer to, or during, spring training.
“It’s definitely not a back-burner topic for us,” Bloom said. “Again, as we’ve said, until there’s something none of what I say actually matters, but it’s definitely not a back-burner topic.
“Needless to say, when there are other things happening in the business — really on both sides, both for clubs and agents — it’s hard to buckle down on things that don’t have the same deadline, but we view this as a top-line, urgent item for us even though it is not an open market and even though it’s not tied to any offseason deadline.”
Several reports this winter, from ESPN and the New York Post, have indicated that the Red Sox and Devers are far apart on negotiations.
If he reaches free agency, Devers could command the largest contract of any free agent on the market next winter, depending on what happens with the Angels and Shohei Ohtani, who is also eligible for free agency.
Because he debuted as a 20-year-old, Devers will enter free agency at age 26, one of the youngest free agents since Bryce Harper, who debuted as a 19-year-old and hit free agency as a 25-year-old in 2018. Harper commanded a 13-year deal worth $330 million at the time.
Harper hit .279 with a .900 OPS with the Nationals before hitting free agency; Devers, who plays a premier position but comes with questions defensively, has hit .283 with an .854 OPS with the Red Sox.
There have been comparisons to the Braves’ Austin Riley, a third baseman who has hit .272 with an .846 OPS in Atlanta and signed a 10-year, $212 million deal in August.
The Red Sox still have a handful of arbitration-eligible players who have yet to agree on contract figures for 2023. Alex Verdugo and Nick Pivetta are among them, and both could be considered candidates to be traded before the season.
