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CHAIM BLOOM HAS been reliving the negotiations with Xander Bogaerts in his head.

“There are a couple of regrets,” the chief baseball officer of the Boston Red Sox told ESPN a week after Bogaerts signed with the San Diego Padres.

When Bogaerts landed an 11-year, $280 million deal this month, the question among baseball executives and agents wasn’t whether Boston should have matched San Diego to re-sign its star shortstop, but why Bogaerts even got to free agency in the first place.

When Bloom signed Trevor Story to a six-year, $140 million contract before spring training last year, Bogaerts felt hopeful that an extension on his own contract might follow. One source close to Bogaerts said he would have seriously considered an extension similar to Story’s deal. Instead, the Red Sox offered Bogaerts an additional year and $30 million on top of the three years and $60 million left on his deal. For a player who helped bring championships to Boston in 2013 and 2018 and had grown into the team’s de facto captain, the offer felt like “a slap” according to a source close to Bogaerts.

Bloom and the Red Sox did not want to sign Bogaerts, who would turn 30 before the end of the season, to a contract that would take him into his late 30s and early 40s. But then Bogaerts posted the best season of his career in 2022 by bWAR — his 5.7 the best among all shortstops in baseball — while hitting .307/.377/.456 with 15 homers in 150 games. And when Trea Turner (4.9 bWAR in 2022) signed an 11-year, $300 million deal with the Philadelphia Phillies, the market for shortstops ballooned. Overnight, the price for Bogaerts doubled — and in the end, for what felt like the dozenth time this offseason, the Red Sox were outbid on a player they were pursuing, this one a beloved homegrown star.

Even with the signings of Masataka Yoshida and Justin Turner so far this offseason, two-last place finishes in three years (a span that also includes one American League Championship Series appearance) have elicited questions from fans who want answers not only about the team’s plan to win, but how a front office that preaches building around in-house talent could let go of two of the most accomplished homegrown stars in franchise history — Bogaerts and Mookie Betts, whom Bloom traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2020.

But when asked if there was anything in particular he regrets about the handling of Bogaerts, Bloom declined to share.

“I don’t want to elaborate,” Bloom said. “It’s more private. I don’t want to get into it.”


RED SOX PRESIDENT Sam Kennedy understands why fans are questioning the ownership group’s commitment to winning. As someone who grew up a few subway stops from Fenway Park, Kennedy constantly hears from his parents and the friends of his children about the team’s struggles in 2022.

“You want that passion,” Kennedy said. “You want the talk radio lines lit up.”

Since John Henry led Fenway Sports Group (then known as New England Sports Ventures) in 2001 to buy the Red Sox, the investment firm has grown into an international sports conglomerate that now owns Liverpool FC in the Premier League and the Pittsburgh Penguins of the NHL, with reports indicating Henry’s potential interest in bidding for the Washington Commanders, in addition to FSG partner LeBron James publicly indicating he wants an NBA team in Las Vegas. Kennedy said FSG targets sports teams tied to communities with deep emotional investments in their franchises — and that they spend to win.

But after missing out on Bogaerts, and finishing in second place in many other free agency sweepstakes, Red Sox fans are questioning the owners’ commitment to the team. In truth, those frustrations go all the way back to David Ortiz, who went year-to-year with the Red Sox during the last seasons of his career, and Jon Lester, who received a below-market extension offer in 2014 before being traded to the Oakland A’s.

Four years after trading Lester, Boston would win a World Series in 2018 after signing David Price to a seven-year, $217 million contract, trading a haul of top prospects for Chris Sale and Craig Kimbrel and locking up J.D. Martinez to a five-year, $110 million contract. And that, Kennedy believes, is the real difference in the fans’ responses to the departures of Betts and Bogaerts: the team’s last-place finish in the AL East in 2022.

“It gets frustrating and irritating when you hear [questions] about your commitment to winning,” Kennedy said. “All of our decisions we make are geared towards trying to win a World Series championship. We don’t get those questions when we’re winning.”

After their last World Series win, former president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski spent big to keep Sale, Martinez and Eovaldi, pushing Boston over the luxury tax threshold. When Betts then asked for a contract valued at $400 million, the Red Sox were unwilling to commit that amount of money, according to multiple league sources. Betts made it clear that he wanted to stay in Boston — he just would not give the team a hometown discount.

The ownership group fired Dombrowski before the end of the 2019 season, less than a year after winning the World Series, and mandated the team cut salary in order to reset the luxury tax penalties. In came Bloom — whom Boston hired from the Tampa Bay Rays — with a vision of creating a Dodgers-style of sustained success, spending big money on star players while consistently developing top prospects to fill out the lineup.

According to multiple sources, Boston’s ownership group did not mandate that Bloom trade Betts to get under the luxury tax. But that is what Bloom ultimately decided to do, with an eye toward increasing the Red Sox’s options in the future. The team traded Betts and Price to Los Angeles for Alex Verdugo, Jeter Downs and Connor Wong. And Betts eventually signed a 12-year, $365 million contract with the Dodgers — a deal he told ESPN in August that he would have accepted in Boston.

Just last week, the Red Sox designated Downs for assignment, admitting defeat on the prospect centerpiece of the Betts deal.

“Have we made wrong decisions in the past? Lots of them,” Kennedy said. “You can’t sit around regretting mistakes of the past. That’s not a good recipe. We respect Mookie and it’s a hard decision, but we’ve moved on.”

But for fans who were told that trading Betts was to create financial flexibility for the future, watching the team get outbid on Bogaerts was the last straw.

With Bogaerts’ production exceeding the team-friendly extension he signed in 2019, the All-Star shortstop planned to exercise the opt-out in his contract after the 2022 season, but he had hoped to play the rest of his career in Boston. He privately expressed to those close to him that he would be willing to eventually move to second or third base if necessary, but he was determined not to accept another team-friendly contract. Like Betts before him, Bogaerts wanted a deal more in line with his perceived value across the sport.

On last season’s Opening Day, Bogaerts expressed his disappointment in not getting an extension done with the Red Sox, and he played out the season knowing he would be a free agent at the end of it.

Bogaerts excelled in 2022, providing one of the few bright spots for a Red Sox team that finished 78-84 and at the bottom of an extremely competitive division. By the end of the season, both Bloom and Kennedy had publicly said signing Bogaerts was their top priority.

Before signing his first extension, Bogaerts told his agent, Scott Boras, that he wanted to stay in Boston. This time, though, he expressed a desire to explore free agency.

“I understand myself better,” Bogaerts told Boras. “I have more of a view of free agency. I want to look into it and see what’s available for me. I want to win, and I want to win now.”

San Diego significantly outbid Boston, and at Bogaerts’ introductory press conference on Dec. 9, he thanked the Padres for being “very straightforward” with him during negotiations.

Boras said Boston’s unwillingness to match the offer from the Padres stemmed from the organization’s evaluation of Bogaerts.

“I can only say that the market for Xander was very different from what their models said,” Boras told ESPN. “But that’s happened before.”

Executives around the sport see the same pattern emerging with Red Sox star third baseman Rafael Devers, who will be 26 at the start of the 2023 season, his last before he becomes an unrestricted free agent in 2024. According to multiple league sources, the Red Sox and Devers are “galaxies apart” in their contract negotiations. The current expectation from Devers and his camp is that the third baseman will be a free agent at the end of 2023, given the current state of contract talks.

Bloom said Boston will make every effort to keep Devers.

“We will probably, I think, go beyond reason to try to get this done,” Bloom said. “Hopefully we can get this done. There are always going to be limitations, like people can just put something plain out of reach. Some people love to bet on themselves and I hope he hits 63 homers if he does that.”


WHILE BOSTON DIDN’T break the bank to sign Bogaerts, the team has given out some large contracts this offseason, signing Japanese outfielder Yoshida to a five-year, $90 million contract while adding Kenley Jansen, Joely Rodriguez and Chris Martin to the bullpen. On Sunday night, the Red Sox also added Turner, a 38-year-old third baseman, on a two-year, $22 million deal. Bloom said the team aimed to add seven to nine players this offseason, and the Red Sox are continuing to explore trades. Additionally, the team is trying to sign players to contract extensions before they hit arbitration, similar to the four-year, $18.75 million contract they gave Garrett Whitlock in April.

If Kennedy is right, and a change in the team’s on-field fortunes will help the fan perception, Boston will need many things to go right that did not in 2022. Ace Chris Sale and center fielder Enrique Hernandez will need to stay healthy. Yoshida will need to produce immediately. Story will need to be more consistent at the plate. The Red Sox will need more contributions from players like Verdugo and Triston Casas, while the rotation will need to lean on Nick Pivetta, Whitlock, Tanner Houck, Brayan Bello and James Paxton, unless Boston adds another starting pitcher. The Red Sox will need to replace the offensive production of Bogaerts in the lineup and his clubhouse presence as a player who spoke both Spanish and English.

As the team builds the roster for 2023, some within the Red Sox front office have questioned Bloom’s decision-making process, team sources told ESPN. One front-office official said Bloom’s deliberate process toward making moves — asking many people for their input before making a decision — can put the Red Sox in a position to fall behind, reacting to other teams versus setting the market.

“I think we have a culture where people can and do express directly to me when they disagree with something,” Bloom said. “We have a lot of people in the loop on transactions that we make and we have a lot of really good debate. We have a place where people can share their opinion and have it be heard.”

Boras said during the negotiations on both Bogaerts and Yoshida that Bloom was “forthright and prepared.”

“Chaim has very defined structure and models that he does for player evaluation,” Boras said.

Executives from other teams question if Bloom can be decisive enough to make big moves to satisfy a rabid, impatient fan base, and whether the approach he built in Tampa will be aggressive enough for a market like Boston.

“I’m not sure how to respond to that,” Bloom said. “I certainly think we’ve made some large commitments in the time I’ve been here. For people who would’ve liked to have seen more, that’s their right. I think a lot of circumstances under which I joined the organization really precluded that for a period of time. I would argue we would’ve been worse off certainly prior to 2021 had we listened to people who wanted to see us make a splash instead of building a good baseball team.”

Boras said Bloom’s aggressiveness varied between Bogaerts and Yoshida.

“For Yoshida, they were very aggressive,” Boras said. “With Xander, they certainly did not meet the standards of what we expected them to do.”

Bloom hears the criticism from the fans, too. When asked about his job status, though, Bloom did not entertain the speculation, saying, “I don’t really worry about that.”

The pressure is on Boston to succeed, but both Bloom and Kennedy know one thing can change the minds of Red Sox fans and earn back their trust: winning.

“There was a lot of talk about our spending in 2022, there was not a lot of talk about our spending in 2021, which was about the same,” Kennedy said. “I think it goes with the wind. If you make the postseason, you’re not going to hear a lot about the spending. If we don’t win, it’s going to be we need to spend, we need to fix things, we need to get better. Winning solves everything.”

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Sources: Tkachuk dodges discipline, will play G4

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Sources: Tkachuk dodges discipline, will play G4

Florida Panthers forward Matthew Tkachuk will not receive supplemental discipline for his hit on Tampa Bay Lightning forward Jake Geuntzel in Game 3, sources told ESPN on Sunday.

Tkachuk’s hit, in the third period of his team’s 5-1 loss, received a five-minute major. According to sources, the NHL Department of Player Safety determined that was enough, considering Guentzel had recently touched the puck and Tkachuk didn’t make contact with Guentzel’s head.

The department also believed that the force in which Tkachuk hit Guentzel was far lesser than the hit Tampa’s Brandon Hagel made on Florida captain Aleksander Barkov in Game 2, which earned Hagel a one game suspension.

The plays led both coaches to trade jabs in the media. After Barkov went down in Game 2, Florida Panthers coach Paul Maurice said: “The only players we hit are the one with pucks.”

Barkov missed the end of the third period, but played in Game 3. Game 4 is Monday at Amerant Bank Arena.

At his postgame press conference, following Tkachuk’s hit on Guentzel, Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper deadpanned the exact same line as Maurice.

Tkachuk leads the series in scoring with three goals and an assist through three games. Guentzel has two goals and two assists for Tampa Bay.

The Battle of Florida is living up to the billing as one of the most contentious rivalries in hockey; either Tampa or Florida has made it to the Stanley Cup Final in each of the last five seasons.

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Jets’ Hellebuyck allows five goals, pulled again

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Jets' Hellebuyck allows five goals, pulled again

ST. LOUIS — Connor Hellebuyck, a two-time Vezina Trophy winner who is among the favorites to win the award again this season, allowed five goals before being pulled early in the third period as the top-seeded Winnipeg Jets fell to the St. Louis Blues 5-1 on Sunday, evening their Western Conference first-round series at 2-2.

Hellebuyck has now been pulled in back-to-back games in St. Louis, during which he has allowed 11 goals and posted a paltry .744 save percentage. Eric Comrie made five saves in relief of Hellebuyck on Sunday, but the game had long been decided by that point.

His performances have not only energized the Blues, the No. 8 seed who lost the first two games of this series, but their fans, as well. In the third period Sunday, the St. Louis faithful chanted, “We want Connor” as he sat on the Jets’ bench.

Brayden Schenn, Tyler Tucker and Justin Faulk each scored second-period goals to give the Blues a 4-1 lead, and Robert Thomas scored 2:01 into the third, ending Hellebuyck’s day.

Across the ice, St. Louis goaltender Jordan Binnington, who defeated Hellebuyck in the 4 Nations Face-Off final in February when Canada outlasted Team USA, made 30 saves in the win. The Blues have now won 14 straight regular-season and playoff games at home dating back to Feb. 23.

“The last 10 minutes, we gave up three goals,” Winnipeg coach Scott Arniel said of the second period. “Those are coverage goals, and those are situations that we usually handle pretty well. They are finding ways to get that puck in the net.”

Kyle Connor scored for the Jets, staking the road team to a 1-0 lead, but the powerful Winnipeg offense that helped the club win the Presidents’ Trophy was never heard from again.

“This is obviously not what we wanted,” Winnipeg forward Mark Scheifele said. “But it’s a best two-of-three series now.”

Hellebuyck has been pulled in consecutive games only one other time in his career, and given the Jets lost in Round 1 last season to the Colorado Avalanche, the Winnipeg goaltending situation figures to be a storyline the rest of this series.

“At the end of the day, you know what, they took advantage of home ice,” Arniel said of the Blues. “We’ve put ourselves in this position. And our best players have to be better than their best players.”

The Jets and Blues return to Winnipeg for Game 5 on Wednesday night.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Williams out as Yanks’ closer; Weaver to get a shot

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Williams out as Yanks' closer; Weaver to get a shot

NEW YORK — Devin Williams has been removed from his role as New York Yankees closer “for right now,” manager Aaron Boone said Sunday.

The move comes two days after Williams endured another rough outing and was booed off the mound at Yankee Stadium in a loss to the Toronto Blue Jays. The 30-year-old right-hander has a 11.25 ERA with career-worst marks in strikeout rate (18.2%), whiff rate (24.1%) and walk rate (15.9%) in eight innings across 10 appearances this season.

“He’s still got everything to be great, right? This is a guy that is in the prime of his career and he’s just going through it a little bit,” said Boone, who informed Williams of the decision Saturday. “I tell our players all the time, you make a career that’s long enough and you’re going to face some challenging moments. You’re going to face some adversity along the way. And good news for Devin is he’s got everything to get through this and come out better on the other side. And that’s my expectation.

“But, for right now, I think it’s best for everyone that we pull him out of that role and try and start building some good rhythm and confidence and momentum and fully expect him to be a central figure for us moving forward.”

Boone said setup man Luke Weaver, who has a 0.00 ERA in 13 innings pitched this season, will assume “a lot of” the team’s save opportunities. Boone maintained he is open to using Weaver in high-leverage spots earlier in games and other relievers to close.

As for Williams, Boone said he won’t have a specific role — whether pitching in low-leverage situations or tight spots just earlier in games — as he seeks to re-establish himself for a team with the ninth-best bullpen ERA in the majors despite his struggles.

The key will be for Williams to avoid falling behind in counts as he did against the three hitters he faced Friday, leading to the home crowd again showering him with loud boos while adding a “We want Weaver!” chant.

Williams wound up surrendering two runs on three hits without recording an out to blow the save and continue his alarming troubles.

The Yankees hope his changeup-fastball mix will baffle hitters again and allow him to return to the pitcher he has been for his entire career.

“Count leverage is a big thing for pitchers, understandably, as it is for hitters,” Boone said. “And I think he’s been behind a number of times. He’s also had it not bounce his way in a number of these games where it’s gotten away.

“But I think the biggest thing for a guy as good as he is, as good as his track record is, and where he is from an age standpoint in the prime of his career, it’s just about, I think, man, having it start to click, getting in a good rhythm and then off we go.”

The Yankees acquired Williams in December to replace Clay Holmes as the club’s closer with one year of team control remaining before reaching free agency. The trade, which sent left-hander Nestor Cortes and prospect Corbin Durbin to Milwaukee, figured to cement the Yankees’ bullpen as one of the best in the majors.

Williams established himself as one of baseball’s premier relievers over six seasons with the Brewers using a singular screwball-like changeup known as “The Airbender.” The right-hander posted a 1.83 ERA with a 39.4% across 241 appearances in Milwaukee. He won the 2020 National League Rookie of the Year Award as a setup man for Josh Hader and made two All-Star teams. His status was undisputed.

But Williams’ Yankees tenure has been turbulent from start. After emerging as the catalyst to have the Yankees’ decades-long no-beard policy changed during spring training, he was booed at Yankee Stadium during his sloppy debut on Opening Day against his former club.

Boone acknowledged the fans’ treatment could have an impact on Williams’ performance.

“I think there’s that adjustment,” Boone said. “Devin’s really been nothing but successful at the big-league level. He’s dominated. So, that’s all part of it. That’s what I talk to these guys all the time about is like, again, you’re going to go through a tough moment. When I came here in 2003 at the trade deadline, Mariano Rivera was getting booed in August. I couldn’t believe it. And then he’s still Mariano Rivera, recoups and goes on to do what he does.

“So, I’m sure there’s some shock to that and some … getting settled. He’s with a new team in a new environment. That’s all part of it. But my reminder to him is you have all the equipment to do this at an elite level and that’s still a reality.”

In other developments, Luis Gil, the reigning AL Rookie of the Year Award winner, started his throwing program Sunday. He has been sidelined since Feb. 28 because of a high-grade lat strain, is on the 60-day injured list and is projected to return in June at the earliest.

Also, right-hander Jonathan Loáisiga, who is returning from internal brace elbow surgery, started his rehab assignment for Class A Tampa on Saturday and threw 11 pitches with one strikeout in a clean inning. He could rejoin the Yankees as early as late May.

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