CC Sabathia knows the process of being a free agent, and just how rattling it can be.
The New York Yankees pitcher has been through it before, and potentially can test the free-agent market after this season if he decides to continue his career. So he’s familiar with the possibilities Mookie Betts may face in the future.
The Boston Red Sox outfielder, who had a year filled with awards and a World Series last season, can become a free agent after the 2020 campaign. While his future is unknown, Sabathia offered up some advice to Betts on the “R2C2 Podcast.”
“Just to stay the course. It ain’t really nothing you can do but just play hard and be yourself,” he said, as transcribed by MassLive.com. “You’ve just got to wait it out. It sucks. You should be getting paid now. I mean, you’re getting paid but you should be getting paid more. You’ve just got to stay the course, man. It sucks being a free agent. I was talking about it with Manny, it’s not fun. It’s a part of the game.”
Sabathia added that it’s more the fact of not knowing where you’ll have a job, saying it’s “unsettling.”
“You know you’re going to get a job,” he said. “You just don’t know where. And then you have your family and everybody’s moving. It’s just a lot of moving parts and different (expletive) that you want to get settled in. We’re so creatures of habit, you get comfortable in what you do. That might all change with free agency. It’s just unsettling a little bit.”
Hopefully Betts calls Boston home for a long, long time.
