Red Sox: Chris Sale backs Mookie Betts for getting out of Boston

Red Sox pitcher Chris Sale isn’t salty that Mookie Betts won a World Series away from Boston.

To be fair to Betts, he didn’t demand a trade from the Red Sox to the Los Angeles Dodgers. What becomes of the prospects Boston got in return remains to be seen, but the Red Sox got what they (at the time) believed to be the best possible offer.

Betts, meanwhile, is a generational talent, and signed a 12-year extension with the Dodgers shortly after landing at LAX. His contract status had been a major issue in the Red Sox front office that eventually led to his departure.

Do any current Red Sox harbor ill will towards Mookie? It’s unlikely, and Sale backed up that argument.

Red Sox players realize that Mookie changed the game in their favor

“Mookie’s a generational talent,” Sale said, per MassLive’s Chris Cotillo. “There’s nothing I can sit up here and say to alleviate that. The only thing we can do is look forward and keep pushing forward. There’s no question every single team that has ever been constructed would be better with Mookie Betts on that team. But, that being said, he’s not on our team. We kind of have to move forward and play with what we’ve got. The guys we have here have fire, they have passion and they have talent.”

Sale added that he never got the impression that Betts wanted out of Boston, but the franchise was placed in a difficult situation — one that Mookie fully controlled. That player-first narrative is one Betts contributed to by making his contract demands clear.

“He never told me, ‘I don’t want to be here.’ I think what he did, and the situation, he was in, was what every single professional athlete on the planet strives to get to. And that’s having the ball in your court, being the driver of the car,” Sale continued.

Since then, Betts has bought the car, and won another World Series trophy to boot.