Why an MLB insider isn’t confident in the Red Sox extending Rafael Devers

Red Sox Rafael Devers watched a ball off his bat leave the field on Friday. Could Red Sox fans watch him leave after 2023? Elsa/Getty Images

The Major League Baseball trade deadline is only weeks away, but many Red Sox fans are concerned about impending moves to keep star players rather than acquiring some.

Star third baseman Rafael Devers is set to become a free agent following the 2023 season. ESPN MLB insider and “Sunday Night Baseball” reporter Buster Olney didn’t exude much confidence in the Red Sox extending the young star prior to then.

“Based on what we’ve seen in the last three years, I can’t envision [an extension] at the moment because it doesn’t feel like the Red Sox are necessarily prepared to step out,” Olney said on the Red Sox Network Pregame Show with Brian Barrett ahead of Friday’s game. “It’s almost like you can draw a line in the sand before Chris Sale’s contract and after Chris Sale’s contract. Before Chris Sale’s contract they were building a huge payroll, they spent aggressively on him and they spent aggressively on other players, and maybe there was a realization – because I know people in the industry were shocked they gave him the deal they gave him because of the arm issues that he had prior to that – maybe that changed the perspective of ownership of how they handled these situations.”

The Sale deal Olney mentioned came in March 2019, when the Red Sox’ ace at the time signed a five-year, $145 million extension entering the final year of his contract. That was one of the final big deals made by former Red Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski before he was fired in September of that year.

Just months after Dombrowski was fired, the Red Sox hired Chaim Bloom to replace him and have him execute the trade of Mookie Betts to the Dodgers before he entered the final year of his deal. Longtime Red Sox shortstop Xander Bogaerts has a player option that he’s likely to exercise and become a free agent this offseason. How the Red Sox handled or are handling those two situations adds to Olney’s doubts of an extension for Devers.

“I think Devers contract – if you look at the type of player that he is, the age (25) that he is, I think you’re looking at a $300 million contract,” Olney said. “And we have no indication that the Red Sox are going to be willing to go that far given how they handled Mookie Betts and given how they handled Xander in his negotiations.”

Since Bloom became the team’s chief baseball officer ahead of the 2020 season, the Red Sox haven’t handed out big money deals that fans have been accustomed to in recent decades. The signing of Trevor Story, which some believe is a precursor to letting Bogaerts walk, was by far and away Bloom’s biggest, giving him a six-year, $140 million deal. Outside of Story, the second-biggest all of Bloom’s signings have been short-term deals. Kiké Hernández has the biggest contract given to a free agent by Bloom outside of Story, with the Red Sox signing him to a two-year, $14 million prior to 2021.

Bloom’s signed a couple of players to extensions, with Garrett Whitlock and Matt Barnes being the most notable. But in the case of Whitlock, the Red Sox bought out his remaining arbitration-eligible years in his deal and got team options for the first two years he was scheduled to become a free agent.

As Olney mentioned, Devers’s contract is likely to be massive, with the $300 million price tag he threw out possibly being on the low-end. Nationals star Juan Soto, who’s 23, rejected a 15-year extension worth $440 million, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reported Saturday. While Devers is two years older and not considered to be the generational player Soto is, he’s very close to him in talent. ESPN MLB insider Jeff Passan said on WEEI’s “The Greg Hill Show” in April that Devers is seeking an extension north of $300 million.

Red Sox legend and soon-to-be Hall of Famer David Ortiz urged his old team to lock up Devers and Bogaerts to long-term deals when speaking to reporters on Thursday. Ortiz also called Devers “one of the top three pure hitters” in baseball.

Devers appreciated Ortiz’s compliments, but knows his future isn’t in Ortiz’s hands.

“It feels great to hear that, but we know he doesn’t have the control over that with either Bogey or me,” Devers said through his translator prior to Friday’s win over the Yankees. “We know the team has the control and we’ll see what happens in the future.”

“If that can happen, that would be great,” Devers added on a possible extension. “We know the type of city Boston is. If it were up to me, I’d stay here my whole career. It’s a great city to play for, great fans, great ballpark. Everything that involves the organization is great so I hope I can finish my career here because that’s what I want.”

One of the men who has control over Devers’s future with the Red Sox is owner John Henry. He told The Boston Globe’s Alex Speier that he hopes to keep Devers and Bogaerts in Boston.

“It takes two to make a deal. I think it’s clear both of them want to be here. We want them here,” Henry told Speier. “We made efforts in the past to try to sign players that we weren’t able to sign. It’s not 100 percent our fault when we don’t end up signing a player. We’ve signed players where it’s really worked out. We’ve signed others that, it’s our job to try to sign the right players. Frankly, over the last 20 years, we haven’t done it [every time], so we’ve had to break teams up.

“The key thing I think with a long-term deal is to make it with the right players. For us at this point, both Raffy and Xander are two players we would love to have. In Xander’s case, it could be till the end of his career. But players have rights and you have to respect that.”

In the meantime, Devers is in the midst of the best season of his career. He hit his 21st homer of the season in Friday’s win over the Yankees and has .326/.383/.600 splits this season, earning him his second All-Star nod and making him a contender to win the AL MVP.

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