Details Emerge On Red Sox's Alex Bregman Offer As Rivals Linger

Things stand in an awkward place...

May 16, 2025; Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Boston Red Sox third baseman Alex Bregman (2) runs out of the dugout before the start of a game against the Atlanta Braves at Fenway Park. Mandatory Credit: Eric Canha-Imagn Images | Eric Canha-Imagn Images

The tea leaves are getting harder to read on Alex Bregman's free agency by the day.

Bregman's market has featured every twist and turn happening out in the open. When the Arizona Diamondbacks and Toronto Blue Jays joined the party, the world quickly found out about it. Whether Bregman wants to ultimately return to the Red Sox or not, he clearly wants to play his suitors against each other.

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Last week, ESPN's Buster Olney reported that the Red Sox made an "aggressive" offer to Bregman, but without exact details, it was hard to speculate how much the needle had moved. Now, we seem to have a bit more of an outline.

Have Red Sox offered Bregman six years?

On Tuesday, Olney reported that the Red Sox had "signaled a willingness" to pay Bregman "big money," and compared the offer to the largest Bregman had available last winter.

"The Boston Red Sox want Bregman and have signaled a willingness to pay him big money -- perhaps something in the range of what the (Detroit) Tigers offered him last spring, a six-year, $171.5 million deal," Olney wrote.

If the Red Sox have six years on the table, though, what is Bregman waiting for? And in the same article, ESPN's Jesse Rogers suggested that the Toronto Blue Jays signing a new third baseman was perhaps the only thing keeping Boston in the sweepstakes.

"There was a feeling among some in the industry that Bregman was down to Toronto and Arizona and when Kazuma Okamoto signed with the Blue Jays, it would push Bregman to the Diamondbacks. Those same people also believed the Red Sox would indeed hang around until the end, seeing how Bregman's market would develop," Rogers wrote.

"Many believe the two sides -- Boston and Bregman -- need each other, given the leadership and production he supplied for the Red Sox last season. But free agents always want more than one serious suitor, so one executive put it this way: 'If it was down to Toronto and Arizona before, maybe it's now Boston or Arizona.'"

It's getting tougher to figure out what to believe, and maybe that's a sign that things are coming to a head soon. And at this point, given that Arizona still has Ketel Marte on the payroll, we'd wager that Red Sox fans should be optimistic, but not overconfident.

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