Good news has been hard to come by this season for the Boston Red Sox, who lost again Sunday to remain in last place in the American League East.
Might there be an ever-so-slight ray of hope on the horizon?
Star shortstop Xander Bogaerts may have softened in his stance on waiting to negotiate a contract extension with the team until following the season, when he can opt out of the final three years and $60 million of his deal.
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"I don’t know how this would work," Bogaerts told The Boston Globe's Pete Abraham prior to a 7-1 loss to the Texas Rangers. "But if they talk to [agent] Scott [Boras] behind closed doors and it’s something that’s fair, he can come to me. We'll see how that goes."
The Red Sox offered Bogaerts a one-year extension during spring training which would have given him a new four-year, $90 million pact, but the 29-year-old seems to have his eye on a contract more in line with what contemporaries such as Francisco Lindor, Carlos Correa and Corey Seager have signed in recent seasons.
It's obviously massive for Boston that Bogaerts may consider extension talks during the season before he can test free agency for the first time in his career. Now for the bad news: His price tag has almost certainly gone up even higher since spring training.
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Bogaerts entered Sunday fourth in the majors -- second in the American League -- with a .344 batting average, along with two homers, 13 runs batting in and an .846 OPS.
A four-time Silver Slugger, three-time All-Star and two-time World Series champion, Bogaerts has been in the Red Sox organization since he signed as an amateur free agent out of Aruba in 2009. As Abraham noted, Bogaerts is on track to set the franchise record for games played at shortstop early next month.