SAN DIEGO — About 15 hours after the New York Yankees locked up one of their biggest homegrown stars in recent memory, the Boston Red Sox watched one of theirs walk away when shortstop Xander Bogaerts agreed to a deal with the San Diego Padres. The deal will pay him $280 million over 11 years, according to a person familiar with the situation.
The move comes two days after the frenetic Padres lost the race for shortstop Trea Turner and not even 18 hours after they learned their sudden run at Aaron Judge had not paid off, either. Frenetic president of baseball operations A.J. Preller wanted a middle-of-the-order type bat, a superstar-caliber player — the kind of athlete who could ease the blow if third baseman Manny Machado opts out of his deal after next season or whether Juan Soto goes elsewhere as a free agent after 2024.
Bogaerts, 30, was not the consensus best shortstop available in this year’s free agent class. Turner is a year younger and able to affect a game with his speed. Carlos Correa, who remains unsigned as of late Wednesday night but is close with Bogaerts’s old Red Sox manager Alex Cora from their days together on the Astros, is two years younger.
But since the start of the 2013 season, only three shortstops have played more games. Only one has accumulated more Wins Above Replacement, according to the FanGraphs calculation. That one, New York Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor, signed a 10-year extension worth $340 million last year.
That deal gave him exactly $1 million more in total than the man who, not too long ago, was supposed to be San Diego’s starting shortstop: Suspended Padres star Fernando Tatis Jr., to whom San Diego committed $340 million over 14 years. But injuries and a suspension for performance-enhancing drugs have led the Padres to accept that Tatis is no longer a surefire superstar, at least not at shortstop, and certainly not before he returns from suspension in late May of next year.
And it leaves the Red Sox, whose chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom called re-signing Bogaerts the team’s top priority this winter after they finished last in the relentless American League East, scrambling. The number of elite, game-changing free agents is dwindling, though Correa joins outfielder Brandon Nimmo and left-handed starter Carlos Rodón (all represented by Scott Boras) as the highest-quality options remaining. For the Red Sox, down a franchise cornerstone in an offseason they needed to spend getting better, it may be time to pivot.
