The Red Sox Will Miss Bogaerts Soon and for the Rest of Their Lives

For most of Winter Meetings, the San Diego Padres vigorously pursued a few of the best free agents available only to come up short on Trea Turner and Aaron Judge. Well, they finally made their big splash after most of the reporters and analysts had returned to their climatologically inferior home cities, signing shortstop Xander Bogaerts, formerly of the Boston Red Sox, to a monster 11-year contract. Bogaerts now stands an impressive $280 million richer and a lot of the Padres’ positional dominoes have fallen into place for the 2023 season.

If you’re ever prone to thinking that a player opt-out is mere frippery, like Roy Oswalt’s tractor or the mustache wax benefit that Rollie Fingers received, Bogaerts’ prior contract extension ought to firmly disabuse you of the notion. Bogaerts would have originally hit free agency after the 2020 season, but he came to terms with the Red Sox on a six-year, $120 million deal to keep him in Boston for what was likely to be the rest of his prime. Here’s what the projection looked like if we go back to that blessed time when we might have mistaken “Covid” for the first name of a Swedish scientist:

At the time, ZiPS would have suggested that a six-year, $160 million contract was a fair offer, representing $169 million of performance value with $9 million lopped off because 2020 would have otherwise been Bogaerts’ final year of arbitration. Coming off his best season as a pro in 2019, Bogaerts chose to forgo some possible money now and possibly more later — since the extension meant he would reach free agency for the first time just before his age-33 season — in return for a solid guarantee. But the Red Sox took on an additional risk of their own, conceding a player opt-out for Bogaerts after the 2022 season, giving him an out just in case he ended up being extremely underpaid relative to his performance rather than just moderately so.

If we turned the clock back eight months, it was by no means certain that Bogaerts would actually opt out of his deal after this season. Coming off a long lockout, teams weren’t exactly in an exuberant mood regarding their wallets. Entering 2022, ZiPS gave Bogaerts an 82% chance of doing better by opting out of the last three years of his deal, projecting him to make $220 million over the rest of his career if he opted out and $167 million if he didn’t. But it might have been most profitable to go the third way and use the threat of the opt-out clause to convince the Red Sox to move towards a lucrative extension or reworking of his existing deal. In the end, that didn’t happen.

Instead, what actually happened during the 2022 season made the decision a slam dunk. Unlike some medium-power hitters, Bogaerts suffered little from the changes in the offensive environment as he became more of a line-drive, spray hitter than he had been in the past (though he was never a traditional uppercut slugger). Despite having his worst homer season since 2017, Bogaerts sported a 134 wRC+, better than either of his previous two seasons and bested only by a career-high 141 in 2019. Also helping was his work to improve defensively at shortstop, which the Red Sox had been vocal about wanting. That work seemed to pay off, as he had the best season of his career in the field. It’s not just an OAA quirk either; both UZR and DRS, which frequently disagree with OAA, also rate 2022 as his best defensive campaign so far.

ZiPS see Bogaerts aging extremely well, both offensively and defensively. While the system still has some skepticism about just how good his glove is right now — a single season really is a very small sample for anything defense-related — the computer expects him to retain his ability to play short at an acceptable level for a long time by virtue of the fact that his strength — namely, avoiding errors — is less prone to age effects and because his range isn’t speed-reliant. Bogaerts has a well-rounded offensive skill set, and the top of his comp list is littered with Hall of Famers and near Hall-ers (Lou Whitaker, Joe Sewell, Joe Cronin, Alan Trammell, Lou Boudreau, Barry Larkin, Robin Yount, Craig Biggio, Arky Vaughan, Nomar Garciaparra). The projected drop in batting average might seem disappointing on its face, but this is largely a park effect and not a value thing; contrary to the conventional wisdom, for the last 40 years or so, Fenway has been mediocre homer park, even for righties, but has regularly been one of the best batting average parks outside Coors Field.

ZiPS projects this deal as “worth” $261 million, so $280 million isn’t a wildly high number for Bogaerts’ services. The Red Sox appear to have technically beaten the Padres in terms of AAV, but you obviously should when you’re offering several fewer years. No, the end of an 11-year contract isn’t likely to be pleasant when the player who signs it isn’t 25 or 26. But on a fundamental level, I don’t really think of this as an 11-year contract. While I don’t have specific knowledge of the team’s exact feelings on this point, I’d be surprised if the Padres expect Bogaerts to be even a league-average starter in 2033. To me, on a de facto level, this is something like an eight-year, $280 million contract, with some money deferred interest-free for three years in a scheme that allows the team to spread the luxury tax hit over 11 years instead of eight. I think something similar is in play with the Trea Turner signing. Contracts result from the system that incentivizes those contracts, and when there’s a very punitive, steeply graduated tax structure, any dollar you can shift to a future year can have an impressive multiplier attached to it. If not for the fact that it would likely annoy Rob Manfred in a way that may not end well for the team that offers it, I think we’d see some wacky contracts, like, say, a 30-year, $400 million deal for a $200 million player.

Prior to the Bogaerts signing, there was a lot of uncertainty about just what the Padres would do about their defensive alignment. Ha-Seong Kim is a better defensive shortstop than Fernando Tatis Jr. and given the latter’s recurrent, serious shoulder problems, San Diego seemed more than willing to move him off short if they felt it was beneficial. This signing is confirmation that they do. At the time I ran the projections for the Padres, left field was a giant gaping hole for the Friars, with Taylor Kohlwey and José Azocar the then-projected primary left fielder, combining for replacement-level performance in ZiPS. That’s not a problem that can be left unaddressed if you’re going to go after the Los Angeles Dodgers in a divisional race.

Nor did the Padres ignore that problem. They went after Judge in the late bidding, and while Bogaerts may not play left field, signing him is just as good as acquiring a Bogaerts-equivalent corner outfielder, as Tatis will eventually play one of those positions (or shift another player to that position). Kim becomes the team’s starting second baseman, and Jake Cronenworth becomes the presumed starter at first. While I think Cronenworth at first isn’t necessarily the best use of his talents, considering that he can adequately play second base, there’s no first baseman in free agency who I think is the equal of Cronenworth even when he’s not at his maximized value.

Prior to Thanksgiving, I ran some very preliminary ZiPS projections for the league as rosters currently stood. The Padres had a four-win projected deficit against the Dodgers. ZiPS now thinks that that gap has been closed, with the Padres ahead on decimal points (0.6 wins). I don’t expect that the Dodgers are done in free agency by any stretch of the imagination, but with Trea Turner gone, there’s at least some small value in taking another option away from Los Angeles.

As for the Red Sox, they appear to be about $40 million under the first luxury tax threshold and $60 million from the second after signing Masataka Yoshida yesterday. In theory, they could still replace the production lost by not bringing Bogaerts back. But even if the team had adequately replaced him with a combination of signings, it still hurts to see Bogaerts leave Boston, in much the same way that wouldn’t have felt quite right if Judge had moved on from the Yankees. In terms of the great shortstops in Red Sox history, Bogaerts had been moving up the ladder very quickly. Joe Cronin is a Hall of Fame shortstop, but he played nearly half his career with the Senators, and Nomar Garciaparra’s career was hampered by injuries. It seems strange, but Bogaerts was already second among Red Sox in career games at short, behind just Rico Petrocelli, and was third in WAR, behind Petrocelli and Nomar. ZiPS projected Bogaerts to become the team’s all-time leader in shortstop WAR early in 2024 and in games near the start of 2025. Simply put, Xander Bogaerts is a player of significant note in the franchise’s history, so a premature goodbye, even if efficient, just feels awful. And coming just a couple years after losing Mookie Betts — and with the prospect of Rafael Devers following before long — it’s even worse.

Boston’s loss is San Diego’s gain. By landing Xander Bogaerts, the Padres have clearly thrown down the gauntlet to the Dodgers. The NL West is looking like a lot of fun.