Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom obviously wouldn't go into specifics Thursday when asked about Boston's contract discussions with Xander Bogaerts and Rafael Devers.
"I don't think it's something we should get into detail on publicly," Bloom said on WEEI's "The Greg Hill Show. "I just don't think it's right for us to do. And there's reports out there, and you then get into confirming, denying, refuting, correcting, whatever. I don't think that's very productive."
Yet, the elephant remains firmly in the room, showing no signs of leaving.
Bogaerts can opt out of his contract and test free agency after this season, while Devers' deal runs through the 2023 Major League Baseball campaign. And it's hard not to wonder, without them inking extensions this spring, whether the clock is ticking on their respective Red Sox tenures.
So, where do things stand?
Well, Bloom spoke generally about how the Red Sox view contract extensions, while acknowledging a gap existed early in the organization's negotiations with Bogaerts and Devers.
"I will say, generally, whenever you're talking extensions -- free agency is free agency -- when you're talking extensions and doing things early, so to speak, now you're adding more variables, right? There's risk that gets shared when you do those things, there's upside that gets shared," Bloom said Thursday. "There's just much more potential -- even if the desire is there and the player wants to be here and we want the player here -- there's just much more potential for people to see the world differently.
"In those cases, without getting into too much detail, it was fairly clear early on that we weren't going to align. Obviously, if we were seeing the world exactly the same, we would've aligned. But those guys are still here, and we didn't find that alignment this time, and they're here and we're all going to try to go out and try to win a World Series and will have a chance to pick this up again down the road. And things will be different for everybody at that point in time, and we'll see where we're at and hopefully we can find that path."
Feeling déjà vu? You're not alone. Many Red Sox fans have hearkened back to the club's handling of Mookie Betts, whom Boston ultimately traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers a year before he was eligible for free agency because it became clear the sides wouldn't reach a long-term deal.
Every situation is unique, though. And the player, the terms, the timing and the situation, among other factors, all could go a long way toward determining whether the Red Sox reach an agreement with Bogaerts and/or Devers.
"I think every discussion you have with any player about these sorts of things, the discussions start somewhere. Sometimes they progress, and sometimes they don't," Bloom said. "Obviously, if these discussions had progressed, we'd be in a different place right now. They didn't. And again, we're excited to take it up again down the road."
The Red Sox are living in the moment, with their sights set on winning a title in 2022, but the future is unavoidable. And so, too, are the Bogaerts and Devers questions right now.
