I don’t know if you guys are paying attention but this 3rd base controversy out of Boston is incredibly sensational.
And while this may seem random – I covered 3rd base extensively in February when CarlsBlogs.com was living in the shadows.
Specifically – I really wanted Alex Bregman to sign with the Cubs because he’s one of my favorite players of all time and the Cubs need a middle-order bat. That made a lot of sense as the rumor mill intensified to the point I sincerely believed the Cubs would land Bregman.
Well fast forward and obviously the Cubs didn’t get Bregman. But also came the immediate realization that the Red Sox didn’t even reach out to Rafael Devers about moving off 3rd base.
It was a whole big thing if you weren’t paying attention
Some of the easiest confusion you could ever clear up in an MLB clubhouse. Just pick up the phone and ask your superstar if he wants to DH or play 3rd base before investing another $40M annually right?
Wrong.
The Red Sox signed Alex Bregman without any consideration for their already-existing franchise player. And the whole thing blew up in such a stupid way that Devers only interpretation is that he was being replaced by the Red Sox with Alex Bregman.
Implausible, really.
But that legitimately happened this winter. Rafael Devers got confused enough about his status with the Red Sox that he mentally checked out.
And with $300M guaranteed, wouldn’t you do the same? I’d hope so. I hope the people reading this are smart enough to measure the incentive/reward structure of guaranteed pro sports contracts.
In that relationship, there’s nothing to motivate Rafael Devers to be a better player. The only thing you could do is harm his motivation by treating him poorly (in his perception) and that’s exactly what the Red Sox did.
Which brings us to today, Tuesday April 1st.
Rafael Devers is 0-19 with 15 strikeouts
– Baseball Reference
Carson Kelly hit for the cycle before Rafael Devers registered one hit this season.
And if you go back to last season – you’ll do 2 things. 1st you’ll invalidate my point that he fell apart because of Bregman. So that sucks for me.
But you’ll also see he has 26 strikeouts in his last 34 at bats.
That’s the most strikeouts in a 9 game span in MLB history according to that chart’s footnotes.
All this to say I’m lucky and happy we don’t have any of this noise around the Cubs. It’s by far the worst drama to surround your baseball club: the most expensive guy playing like the biggest asshole on the field.
That was a brutal thing to go through with Jason Heyward and I don’t wish it on my worst enemies.
Lucky for us though we can’t sign big free agents any more because Tom Ricketts is such a cheap ass clown. So I don’t even think this could be a problem for us in the future.
But if we did spend money like a normal big market MLB franchise owned by a normal billionaire who didn’t wear a ball gag for his dad around the holidays, then this is something we’d definitely want to avoid at all costs.