SAN DIEGO — Xander Bogaerts thought he’d be in Boston for his entire career.
He said as much as he sat in his new home dugout at Petco Park on Friday afternoon, wearing the colors and logo of his new squad, preparing to face the organization he’d been a part of since his first professional game as a teenage prospect, the team he’d long thought he’d be playing for until the day he decided not to play anymore.
Then, he admitted that seeds of doubt began to take root in his mind long before he opted out of his contract last November.
“I don’t know the date, but somewhere in March (2022),” the 30-year-old shortstop said, a bit wistfully. “You never know what happens at the end of the year, but yeah, somewhere around that time.”
It’s easy to connect the dots to the Red Sox signing free-agent shortstop Trevor Story, which happened on March 23, 2022.
Thus, Bogaerts reported to what would be his last Fort Myers spring training feeling his Boston expiration date was coming much sooner than he’d ever thought.
“(Spring training is) where the thought starts coming in of like, ‘Hey, you know, now you know where they’re at, you know, in their minds, their plans, their whatever,” he said. “That’s when you kind of had a better idea, I would say,” though he added that anything could’ve happened at the end of last season.
“You never know until it really happens,” he said.
What had already happened, though, was the Red Sox targeting Story before approaching Bogaerts to discuss extending his contract to prevent him from opting out of the team-friendly deal he’d initiated in April 2019. Instead, they set about finding a replacement for him. Sources described Bogaerts seeing that as a “slap in the face,” especially because he’d just helped them entice Story to come to Boston.
Only after giving Story his six-year, $140 million contract (the seventh richest in franchise history) did the Red Sox turn around and lowball their homegrown star, who’d been vocal about wanting to remain in Boston for his entire career. To add insult to injury, their first offer was only an additional year and $30 million added onto his ongoing contract.
Though the decision to opt out was Bogaerts’, it was helped along by a team that had shown they didn’t seem to value him as much as Story, a free agent who played the same position, but without Bogaerts’ proven postseason experience, and whose numbers on the road were significantly worse than at his former home field, the hitters’ paradise known as Coors Field. Nor as much as several teams did when Bogaerts officially decided to test free agency and received multiple offers of at least $200 million.
Bogaerts is happy in San Diego, but does miss Boston. “Not the weather,” an inadvertently ironic statement, given southern California’s unusually gloomy weather this spring. Asked what he misses most, he was quick to say, “Obviously, the fans.”
When the teams took the field on Friday evening, he’d flip the switch. He’d already gone out for breakfast with Alex Cora and had dinner with Rafael Devers, but “maybe an hour before game time,” he’d prepare to face them and try to beat them.
Bogaerts left Boston having played more games at shortstop than any of his predecessors in franchise history. His name is sprinkled throughout the club’s all-time leaderboards, and helped bring home two of the four gleaming trophies won this century. He’s this generation’s Bobby Doerr, nicknamed the “Silent Captain” by teammate Ted Williams for his noble, underrated contributions and leadership.
Ironic that Bogaerts’ absence is loudly felt.