Alex Bregman has been signed with the Boston Red Sox for almost a week now, and yet no one seems ready to move on. Agent Scott Boras reached out by letter to the Detroit Free Press on Monday, claiming that the Detroit Tigers were indeed one of Bregman’s top choices and that Scott Harris had turned down two final contract offers prior to the infielder finally going to Boston.
Evan Petzold of the Freep reports Boras as saying the Red Sox and the Tigers were Bregman’s two top choices. He went out of his way to cool the ire of scorned Tigers fans in a manner that suggests he still wants to keep them in play for the future should Bregman decide to opt-out of his deal with the Red Sox after either the 2025 or 2026 seasons.
The Boras quotes are all charm and honey.
“Alex has great respect for the Detroit organization, its great players, and its heralded manager,” Boras wrote. “He received a close-up view of the Tigers and their promising future during the 2024 playoffs, which is why he directed me to place Detroit on his priority list for free-agent meetings.
Petzold reports sources that say Bregman’s team was directed to give the Tigers two options. Either a six-year deal worth $186 million with an opt-out after year one, or a seven-year deal worth $200 million and no opt-outs. Neither option contained any deferred money. That $200 million number with no opt-outs suggests that was Scott Boras specific goal all along.
The Tigers final offer was six years, $171.5 million with a player opt-out after the 2026 season, with $40 million deferred.
All winter, we proposed a meeting point for the Tigers and Bregman of six years, $180 million. That’s a pretty reasonable price for both parties. The Tigers are rarely going to get discounts from top talent, but Bregman couldn’t expect to land $200 million the way this offseason had played out. He chose the $120 million, three-year offer with the Red Sox, which gives him opt-outs after each season of the deal but has $60 million deferred. It’s peculiar that the Tigers didn’t offer that, or something similar, as Bregman leaving early in his tenure would seemingly be ideal. The Tigers offered only a player option after year two in their $171.5 million offer.
While it’s certainly a decent bet that Bregman could stay in Boston for the life of the deal, and then need just a three-year deal worth around $50 million to ultimately equal the Tigers offer, there’s no way around the fact that the Tigers offer guaranteed him that $171.5 million. Instead, Bregman is betting he can opt-out next offseason and receive the same offers, boosting his overall earnings beyond the Tigers’ offer. That isn’t so likely to work out for him.
The “better” deal is in the eye of the beholder here, but assuming all this is true, it was foolish to be unwilling to go to $186 million on Harris’ part. They clearly wanted Bregman badly, and the “we only want players who want to be here,” bit from Harris and company since Bregman’s announcement has come off as a bit childish. If the difference was $15 million spread out over six seasons, that’s a bad way to lose out on the rare major free agent this organization had a solid chance of landing. I’m still finding it a bit hard to believe that they wouldn’t have been able to meet somewhere in the middle of those offers. As they say, maybe he just didn’t want to play here, and Boras is just trying to cool any hard feelings.
In the end, the Tigers didn’t want him badly enough to really go get him, and Bregman wasn’t that keen on anyone’s offer, and took the path of trying again next year. This is how teams get a reputation for doing just enough to seem like they’re trying without really landing their top targets. Notably the San Francisco Giants were in that mode for years, including during Harris’ tenure as the Giants GM. The Willy Adames signing this offseason is perhaps a sign that things are changing with Buster Posey now at the helm. Still, I still can’t really hammer the front office over this either.
Possibly the first year opt-out was a sticking point in Bregman’s offer, but even that doesn’t make a lot of sense. No one wants to pay for Alex Bregman’s 34, 35, and 36-year-old seasons. They want the age 31, 32, and 33 years. If the Tigers had signed that six-year deal and Bregman had a great year and opted out, so what? The Tigers got what they wanted, they’re one year closer to their next major wave of prospect talent arriving, and now the payroll is wide open again without a long-term commitment guaranteed to sour in the final years of any long free agent contract.
As for Bregman, the numbers coming out and Boras saying nice things about the Tigers paints his side in kind of an odd light. It sounds like a mix of regret and some pretty blatant stroking of Tigers fans to try and keep the soil fertile in Detroit should Bregman opt-out after his first year in Boston as expected.
Do Red Sox fans want to hear how Bregman was really interested in Detroit but had to settle for Boston’s deal so that he can try again next year? Or his agent trying to keep his player from becoming unpopular here with the connotation included that Bregman is going to jump ship from Bean Town at first opportunity? Even addressing this side of the issue seems like an admission of failure on Boras’ part. They should just be excited about his career in Boston, right?
The whole thing smacks of miscalculations all around.
In less than a week since joining the Red Sox, drama around what position Bregman is going to play has only increased. It was initially reported that Bregman would move over to second base, leaving homegrown star Rafael Devers at third base. Already that’s a bit of devaluing of Bregman. Already a slow baserunner who thrives at third base due to his reflexes, great hands, and quick transfer rather than by arm strength, that decision only highlighted the potential need for Bregman to eventually move off the position anyway in a few seasons.
This also didn’t make optimal sense for the Red Sox infield alignment. The 28-year-old Devers is under contract through 2033, and is already a subpar defender at third base. Moving Bregman there and pushing Devers to first base or even to second base himself would be ideal, as despite his diminished speed, Bregman is still a plus defender at third. Instead, Devers quickly opined that he was staying at third base, calling it “my position” in remarks to the media. Bregman, for his part, has just said he’ll do whatever is best for the team, which is a sensible tack to take, but the Red Sox themselves don’t appear to know what they’re doing here either. In the end, you’d assume Alex Cora will insist on the best defensive alignment for the team, but it’s not exactly a great start to be having this debate in public after the trade is done.
When asked about Rafael Devers being promised he’d stick at 3B when he signed his extension… Alex Cora made it clear that Chaim Bloom isn’t here anymore. pic.twitter.com/ap9634CFWb
— Tyler Milliken (@tylermilliken_) February 17, 2025
Alex Cora said that Bregman would take balls at both positions this spring. Craig Breslow offered only that, “the most important thing was getting Alex into a Red Sox uniform as an elite defender. The conversations about where he’ll play are ongoing and when the time is right we’ll make that determination.”
Did everyone think all this through?
Bregman’s camp ostensibly chose Boston because of the flexibility to return to free agency next year and pursue the deal he was hoping to get in the first place. Now he’s seemingly, though not certainly, moving to second base, devaluing his defensive ability somewhat. Teams will still believe him capable of coming back to the hot corner for a few years, but there’s less certainty in a player in his early 30’s moving back there after a year playing a position with fewer demands on reaction time.
Offensively, sure he may golf a few more balls over the Green Monster than the number of home runs the venerable old wall takes away, but teams don’t care about this anyway. They’ll be looking strictly at quality of contact data to project him with their teams. No one is going to be fooled by park influenced home run totals in this day and age.
The whole saga has somehow gotten stranger since it ended. What’s clear is that the Red Sox got a pretty good deal here even if they aren’t sure what to do with it yet. They won’t ever be stuck paying for Bregman’s middle thirties, and while $40 million per season is a lot of AAV, some of that is deferred, which helps. Most likely, they took on minimal commitment here, as Bregman seems laser focused on returning to free agency since he took the extra opt-out over the long-term security of the Tigers’ offer.
The Red Sox deal does give him security for a tough season or a major injury, but it’s clearly designed as short-term insurance before he tests free agency again next offseason. Meanwhile, the odds that his earnings over the proposed six-year term of the Tigers’ offer will be significantly greater on his current path don’t seem that high either.
Bregman will have $40 million under his belt after the 2025 season, and let’s say he follows the obvious course laid out here. He puts up a good season, draws a few more walks, hits 25 homers, and is good at second base or ends up playing mostly third as usual. Is he going to get a $140 million offer next offseason? Maybe, but that still seems like the probable limit, bringing him to $180 million total.
Teams want to pay for the youngest years in that time span. With each passing year, the likely amount of well above average years in Bregman’s future decline. Each year on, the premium years teams are willing to pay for, knowing they’re still going to overpay per year on the back half of such a deal, decline in number.
The Tigers were willing to offer six years at about $28.5 million per season. They too wanted to defer some of that contract, reportedly $40 million on the total $171.5 million offer. Still that doesn’t mean the same AAV applies next offseason assuming Bregman then expects a five-year deal. After Bregman burns his age 31 season, you’re now hoping for two more prime seasons rather than three, with the decline phase starting earlier in the deal than it would have with a six-year deal this offseason.
If the Tigers are still interested, that offer quite reasonably becomes more like five years, $130 million. Maybe Boras can get a team close to a $140-150 million offer, but the total earnings over his age 31-36 season is then $180-190 million. That’s a lot of headache to come out $8.5-18.5 million or so beyond the Tigers offer this offseason. It assumes things go well in Boston and that there are still the same number of teams interested next offseason.
Hopefully, this is the last we have to hear about this. I can be annoyed at Harris if there really was an offer for six years, $186 million from Bregman on the table, but he did commit the most money and guaranteed the money for the player’s likely mid-30’s decline where the Red Sox would not. Meanwhile, Boras trying to butter up the fanbase with comments about how much Bregman likes the Tigers in preparation for a round two next offseason isn’t going to go over well.
Bregman is a gamer and a well liked and respected teammate, and he and Alex Cora have a long history, so he’ll fit in fine however the Red Sox choose to deploy their infield. But this can’t be how he was imagining his impending free agency playing out. Once again it feels like Scott Boras overpromised his client a deal beyond $200 million, and under delivered.
The deal with Boston does little more for Bregman’s career than to give him a second chance to get the same overall deal he wanted, a year later than he wanted it. Those aren’t great odds once a player gets into their 30’s, but he chose to bet on himself to try and squeeze every last dollar out of his career. Maybe it will work out, but it’s hard to imagine the Tigers circling back next year.
Bregman was an ideal bridge signing for the Tigers this offseason and they weren’t able to get it done. As a result, they were only able to make a modest show of upgrading their offense heading into 2025. Another year down the road and the Tigers will hopefully have more certainty in prospects like Hao-Yu Lee, Kevin McGonigle, Max Clark, and Thayron Liranzo’s ETA to the major leagues. They’re likely to become less apt to pursue a major free agent rather than more so.
In the end, we’re left feeling like both parties misplayed their hands a bit. The Tigers didn’t land the player they wanted despite a not insurmountable difference in contract offers. If they wanted deferrals, it stands to reason that the total offer has to be a good deal higher than it was. Alex Bregman didn’t get the deal he wanted, and will now be under pressure for a big year while potentially learning a new position. He’s now pressed not just to get more than was offered this offseason, but even to avoid losing out overall in total earnings over the six years in question.
Perhaps the Tigers have comment to make on the proposed terms leaking for the two offers made to them on Bregman’s behalf, but if we’re lucky, they’ll stick to their general policy of not talking about negotiations, and we can all finally move on.