I know this might be a minority opinion given how much he is being paid but hear me out. Devers signed his contract extension with Boston to be their starting third baseman. He did not wait till he was a free agent nor did he wait till the team tagged him. In all honesty 10 years at $313.5 mil is a hell of a win for Boston.
Fast forward a couple of years and while you sign a player who had already offered to play second but the team tells him he will play third. Devers hated this and it wasn’t a secret as they did essentially sign a replacement for him. Now I love Breggy and defensively he is the better third baseman but for Devers that doesn’t matter much.
During spring training they told him forget the glove focus on hitting and even though he made it known he hated it he did it. Now that they lost their first baseman to a season ending injury they asked him to play first…. Well you said he wasn’t good enough to play third the position he has always played so why would he want to?
At most this would be for maybe a season and it a position he has never played. This doesn’t help him or really the team given he could completely suck at it. I get he’s making huge money but he signed to do X they told him a couple years in he would do Y and now suddenly they want him to not only learn but do Z….
This is textbook how to destroy a locker room and the wild part is if Bregman oops out after the season and they do not resign him then you’ve severely damaged the relationship with Devers. Boston is just wildly shooting from the hip and it’s crazy to see!