It's fair to wonder if this could be a big spring training for Rafael Devers.
Not only because he's coming off an OK-not great 2020 season, but also because he very much is a candidate to get a contract extension soon.
That's something that's been speculated for a while, as Devers only has two more years of team control following 2021 and this generally is a time of year that extensions get done. Chris Sale's deal was done in spring training, so too was Christian Vazquez's. Xander Bogaerts' contract was reached just days after the start of the 2019 season.
So, is Devers getting an extension over the next few weeks?
"That's a tough one to answer directly" Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom chuckled during an appearance on Sirius XM's "Fantasy Alarm" program. "What I would say is obviously, I've mentioned this, this is generally the time of year when those types of conversations happen. I don't need to tell you guys how good he is or how important he is. He's a guy that we would love to see wearing our uniform for a long, long time.
"If and when there's news to announce because of that, we will consider who we want to leak it to, but obviously we're not going to get into any kind of specifics about the process there."
For context: It's worth mentioning that the leaking comment from Bloom came as a joke because the host asked him to leak news of a Devers extension to him down the road.
Regardless, it sounds like the Bloom and the Red Sox very much view Devers as a franchise cornerstone, and will approach things as such.
