Red Sox final offer to Xander Bogaerts confirms fans’ worst fears

The Boston Red Sox cheaped out with Xander Bogaerts, a horrible look for the organization.

The Boston Red Sox are going to look and feel much different next year. Xander Bogaerts is on his way out, exercising his free agent right by signing with the San Diego Padres.

When you look at the money he got from San Diego, $280 million over 11 years ($16.36 million AAV), it’s not a huge surprise the Red Sox didn’t go all-in in negotiations to match. But the details of what the Red Sox did (or: didn’t) offer looks pretty bad.

According to Pete Abraham, the Red Sox weren’t even close on an offer with Bogaerts.

Red Sox owed it to Xander Bogaerts to at least try in contract negotiations

The Red Sox let Xander Bogaerts walk. For the money San Diego gave him, that’s fine.

But for all he’s done for the organization, the least Boston could have done was given him a competitive offer, even if they knew it was unlikely he’d come back if they didn’t match what San Diego offered.

Not even coming close to what San Diego offered is straight-up disrespectful to the shortstop who has spent his decade-long career entirely in Boston.

It confirms Boston is probably entering a rebuild of sorts, or at the very least committed to making the team look different as it moves back toward building a competitive product.

That might be the right choice in the long run, but dangit, it stings for Boston fans, and they have every right to be upset the front office didn’t want to put forth their best effort toward keeping Bogaerts.