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Early last June,
Boston.com's
Eric Wilbur suggested that
the Red Sox should lock-up Xander Bogaerts and Mookie Betts to contemporaneous long-term contracts—as the Chicago Blackhawks did with
Jonathan Toews and
Patrick Kane (they inked 8-year, $84 million extensions on the same day in 2014). If anything, the
rest of the 2016 season made that strategy even
more savvy—and could also include
Jackie Bradley, Jr. With each passing year, this trio of
'Killer B's' (and a fourth on the horizon in
Andrew Benintendi) will get more and more expensive to keep in Boston. So, what's stopping
John Henry from pulling the trigger? Don't forget that the Red Sox are not Henry's
only iron in the fire. There is foreign soccer, NASCAR,
The Boston Globe,
NESN, and who knows what else? All these distractions—monetary and otherwise—
might prevent us from keeping this core of young baseball talent together at Fenway. What a shame that would be.
