What Former Red Sox Alex Verdugo Wants To Prove With Yankees

The 2024 Major League Baseball season will mark the start of a new chapter for Alex Verdugo.

Verdugo, who arrived in Boston in 2020 via the Mookie Betts trade with the Los Angeles Dodgers, was dealt to the New York Yankees earlier this month. The rare swap between longtime rivals signaled the end of a tumultuous Red Sox tenure for Verdugo, whose bright spots on the field were matched by suboptimal moments.

But those lowlights are in the past, and Verdugo clearly is excited about the opportunity to start fresh in the Bronx.

“I just want to go to this organization, and I’m just wanting to work hard,” Verdugo told reporters, per The Boston Globe. “I want to prove maybe a lot of these he-said-she-said things wrong. I want to show them that, we’re all people, man. We’re all humans. And you know, yeah, we make mistakes. But how do we learn from it? How do we bounce back from it and how much stronger do we get from that?”

Verdugo will be tasked with trying to bounce back in a high-pressure environment where fans have become restless by the Yankees’ lack of recent postseason success. But the confident 27-year-old isn’t worried about potentially drawing the ire of New York supporters.