Seth Payne and Sean Pendergast react to the Alex Bregman agreeing to a three-year, $120 million deal with the Boston Red Sox.
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00:00if it's good news, bad news, whatever. I think it's news that everybody was resigned to in
00:04terms of Alex Bregman no longer being a Houston Astro, but man, the contract that he got from
00:09the Boston Red Sox that he agreed to reported, it was reported last night. He agreed to yesterday.
00:15I'm assuming Alex Bregman will be a member of the Boston Red Sox three years, $120 million
00:24a year with opt-outs after each season. So we can talk about whether he's going to opt
00:30out. We can talk about it. There's a lot to get into with this, but the biggest thing
00:33to me, Seth, like the, the thing that popped on the headlines, Alex Bregman is among the
00:38six or seven highest paid players in baseball based on average annual value. He and Scott
00:43Boris wound up playing this thing. I would say almost perfectly in my time with, uh,
00:49with judge for being the sixth largest contractor average per year with a longer contract, obviously
00:58nine years. But the fact that he got that plus an opt-out after every year, I mean,
01:03yeah, I can't be angry at him. That's a, that's a hell of a lot of guaranteed money, but also
01:08with the ability to be a free agent, if you had put in an MVP caliber season or something,
01:14we're talking about it before the break, you were talking about just how, how good that
01:17ballpark's going to be for him. Oh yeah. He's going to, he is going to pepper the green
01:22monster. I said to Seth before we came on the air, I said, if you can find a prop bet
01:25out there for Alex Bregman is a very specific prop bet, but I'm assuming it exists somewhere
01:30leading the league in doubles. Go find that one. Cause he is going to, even with his normal
01:35April and May slump, he'll hit 50 doubles in that ballpark for sure. I'll tell you what
01:41the other thing too, we always, we always talk about, I guess it's, it's less and less
01:45of a talking point with each passing year, but all right, what's it like for a guy from
01:50the Astros when he goes to other teams where there's so much hatred league wide for the
01:54Astros amongst fan bases, players don't give a damn anymore. But I mean, Boston's gotta
01:59be the best choice, right? For anybody who was on the 2017 Astros team, Alex core is
02:05up there.
02:06They had their own little shenanigans. There's nobody, I feel like Boston's the place that
02:11has the least reason to, to, to hold anything against anybody. It comes to all of that least
02:17amount of hypocrisy. Yeah, probably so. Probably so. So it becomes one of the least cheating
02:22players on that team, right? I don't even know. I wonder how many guys are still left
02:28on that team from back then. Probably not that many. The Red Sox had been many different
02:32iterations of the Red Sox. Good. Been bad. They've been champions. They've been, yeah.
02:38So so three years, 120 million, I guess just to contextualize the marketplace, I have not
02:44seen any official reports other than just, you know, Ari Alexander, two sources that
02:49said the Astros sweetened their deal. But I've not seen any specific numbers on it.
02:54So let's just assume that the deal the Astros had on the table was six years, one 56. The
02:59other offers reportedly for Alex Bregman, the last three teams standing were reportedly
03:05the Cubs, the Tigers, and the Red Sox. We know that the Red Sox ultimately agreed to
03:09three years, 120 million with opt-outs after each year. The largest deal of those three
03:13in terms of years in total money was the Detroit Tigers who went up to six years and a little
03:18over 170 million. They had an opt-out clause after two seasons. So that's pretty good deal.
03:23You know, 28 million a year opt out after two seasons. And then the Cubs offered four
03:28years, 120 million, and that was 30 million. So that's the second highest offer. And that
03:36the second and third season. So both the Tigers and the Cubs wanted Bregman to stick around
03:39for at least two years under their deals. The Red Sox are like, man, we'll flirt with
03:43you for a year. And then you can opt out again. I look regardless of which team he signed
03:49with. And I cannot believe he's getting $40 million a year. Alex Bregman, he's a very
03:53good baseball player, but wow. To see his name judge, to see his name, Seth, alongside
03:58judge and show. Hey, and all these other names, you know, like in that top echelon is really
04:04jarring to me and, and congratulations to him. I, I don't think I never thought in any
04:10of these deals with these opt-outs that Alex Bregman was going to go out and get was already
04:15aching under that deal. Like I, he's definitely not opting out. I don't know. I don't say
04:20definitely about anything. I just said, the guy's going to hit 50 doubles at Fenway, probably
04:24at 30 home runs too. But I, if I had to bet, if I had to bet, I would say that he's going
04:29to play out this deal, this three year deal with the Red Sox for 120 million and probably
04:34still almost definitely still make up the difference of the six year deals that he had
04:39on the table.
04:40Like he's definitely getting 50 or 60 more on the back end of this three year deal from
04:46somebody.
04:47No, I think, yeah, I think he's, he's hedged. He's not betting on himself. He's hedging
04:50on himself. It's a, it's a boatload of guaranteed money over three years. He's got opt-outs.
04:56So if any given point in these three years, if he looks like he's on fire or something,
05:00or something Boris can be whispering to people behind the scenes. So I have to, I have to
05:05do what I never wanted to do and acknowledge that Scott Boris handled this pretty damn
05:09well.
05:10Yeah. I think, I think Bregman wins here, man. I think Bregman wins and I think they,
05:14you know, they get it done right before pitchers and catchers start reporting here. I also
05:17blame Carlos Correa for setting a good precedent for the opt-out scenarios that these types
05:23of deals. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I blame him. I blame Correa. So now I hate him even more
05:29than I don't really hate him that much.
05:30Now, now I, but that hate part I am curious about. Now you and I just went through all
05:34the, like all the, the, the administrative part of this contract and what the money is
05:38and, and, and how we think Bregman is going to do in Boston. The part I'm really curious
05:43about is how people feel, you know, like this morning about, but people, we know Seth through
05:48the course of the last few weeks of this negotiation, the majority of Astro fans that we interacted
05:53with were done with Bregman or name calling or whatever. I'm curious now that we know
06:00what the answers to the test are, now that we know what the ultimate deal became, I can't
06:04fault Alex Bregman and thus I'm not really angry with Alex Bregman.
06:08No. And I think a part of it too is Chandler Rome had pointed out in his article yesterday
06:13that one of the conditions of the CBA is that a team is not allowed to say that they're
06:20out on a player on a free agent, which is, which is funny. Um, that's a, that's a pretty
06:25good little wrinkle. The players negotiated in there, but so the Astros technically aren't
06:30even allowed to say they're out on a player or they're not in it anymore. And in hindsight,
06:35looking at it, the other part that's been annoying me is the reports that the Astros
06:39never rescinded their offer. Like, all right. I mean, that's like, I, is that something
06:45you normally do? Like, Hey, by the way, offers off the table, bro, we all want to send an
06:50offer at any time. I wanted them to. I know. But if Scott Boris calls back, he's got to
06:55say like, Hey, is that deal still good? It's not the Astros can rescind it whenever the
07:00hell they want.
07:01So I think the Astros by and large have burned pretty much out on this, but they're not allowed
07:05to say so. And if there was a possibility, they're going to keep the window open. The
07:10fact that this deal makes a lot of sense financially for Bregman. I think that that
07:16actually helps. It's weird. We've come a long way in terms of athlete free agency where
07:20it used to be any player that left in free agent was just a greedy, selfish bastard.
07:24Now it's like, well, Hey, it makes sense. You know, as a businessman, if he had left,
07:28if he had left for a deal worse than what the Astros offered him, then I would have
07:32been PO because that would have felt like a personal slump makes very good financial
07:36sense.
07:37I think even, I think people, if he had left for the Cubs deal four years, one 20, I like,
07:42I would have been agitated by that. Cause it's right in the neighborhood with the Astros
07:45and opt out though too. Yeah. Yeah. Like just agitated. I'm like, I'm there are people legitimately
07:50that were legitimately angry over the last few weeks over this whole thing. And I'm curious
07:54if now that we know what the deal looks like, if they still feel that way, you know, I'll
07:57tell you what, I mean, just to put it in terms of how lucrative this is on a per year basis,
08:03it's the sixth highest contract average per year in major league baseball history. If
08:08you take away the Mets spending splurges and cause they're just spending money like drunken
08:14sailors.
08:15It's the third highest it's tied with judge for the third highest, but yet Scherzer Verlander
08:19and Soto into that, which obviously Soto is a more of a real actual one Scherzer and Verlander
08:25were the like, yeah, we're going to spend any, whatever it takes, we're going to spend
08:28like crazy. Yeah. So I would look at it like it's the fourth highest contract with that
08:33real, real contract. And then, you know, in amongst position players as well. Well, if
08:38you want to call Shay, Otani, whatever he's a position player right now, for sure. Yeah.
08:43If we take out freaks of nature and the Mets, okay. It's the, it's maybe the best second
08:49highest second high. So who's on the list? You got the list in front. It would be a Zach
08:53Wheeler with the fillers. Okay. So, Oh yeah. So if you take him out, it's the highest amongst
08:57if we take out freaks of nature and the Mets and pitchers, pitchers, it's the highest contract
09:05in major league history for someone who could walk around society and not be gawked at or
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