The Boston Red Sox have a lot of blanks to fill in come 2020, and many of them surround some key players.
Mitch Moreland, Brock Holt and Rick Porcello will become free agents, while J.D. Martinez can opt-out of his contract and test free agency. Mookie Betts still is under contract for another year, but Tom Werner and John Henry both have expressed desire to stay under the luxury tax threshold come next year.
That certainly makes one think how the team will go about what it will do with Betts. Werner wants the right fielder in Boston for the remainder of his career, but there’s no telling how the future will pan out. And Betts, who’s a year removed from winning American League MVP, Gold Glove and Silver Slugger award in 2018, is not focusing on where he may or may not be for the rest of time in Major League Baseball.
“That’s out of my hands,” he told The Boston Globe’s Peter Abraham after Sunday’s dramatic 5-4 win over the Baltimore Orioles. “I have my representation to take care of that type of stuff so I don’t worry about it … I’m still here. It’s not like I’m gone until whenever. I’m not going to focus on that right now.”
Betts scored the winning run in Sunday’s final game of 2019 on a wild sequence and clubbed 29 home runs and 80 RBIs, good for a .295 average.
