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Live: Mookie Betts Press Conference
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The Los Angeles Dodgers bear signed huge name outfielder Mookie Betts to a 12-twelve months contract extension that can flee via the 2032 season. The membership presented the deal on Wednesday. The deal will pay Betts a complete of $365 million, in step with CBS Sports HQ’s Jim Bowden. Betts is owed a salary of $27 million for 2020 — prorated down to roughly $20 million — and the recent contract might well possibly no longer open till the 2021 season.
Betts’ recent contract turns into the second largest in MLB history, at the inspire of most productive Mike Trout’s 12-twelve months, $430 million contract with the Angels. Betts had been slated for free agency this coming offseason. MLB payrolls are expected to shrink going ahead as groups contend with the financial fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, but Betts’ deal will erase any belief that high free agents had been no longer going to construct up paid this iciness, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal provides.
The considerable particular person outfielder will lastly cancel his L.A. debut Thursday when the Dodgers face the Giants at Dodger Stadium, albeit with out any fans in attendance. Betts, who’s slated to snatch over the Dodgers’ leadoff plight and be the on a typical basis moral fielder, gained four consecutive Gold Gloves and leads the league with 93 defensive runs saved in moral self-discipline since 2016. With the Crimson Sox, he gained the AL MVP Award in 2018 and effect up a WAR of 41.8 all the strategy via parts of six seasons. That makes one among the absolute most sensible gamers in all of baseball over that span and likely the Sox’s most productive homegrown situation participant since Carl Yastrzemski.
In a deeply unpopular transfer, the Crimson Sox traded Betts to the Dodgers in February in a blockbuster that additionally despatched David Designate to L.A. in switch for a equipment fronted by outfielder Alex Verdugo. Designate currently opted out of the season over health concerns.
The likelihood for the Dodgers — in particular after the 2020 season grew to change into imperiled — is that Betts would leave via free agency. Now, even supposing, these concerns are a ingredient of the previous, and Betts will likely be a franchise cornerstone for years but to reach inspire.
With a shortened season on the horizon, Betts must play a bigger feature in merely getting the Dodgers to the postseason. Dodgers fans are going to expose the alternate a success or failure in response as to whether or no longer or no longer the team can bring dwelling a championship for the first time since 1988. The Dodgers arguably bear the strongest roster in all of baseball, so winning the World Sequence in 2020 is absolutely an attainable goal.
Betts currently said that he has no regrets about rejecting a reported 10-twelve months, $300 million provide from the Crimson Sox final offseason. The frail AL MVP performed the 2019 season with a .295/.391/.524 batting line, 40 doubles and 29 dwelling runs. It will peaceful now be glaring that Betts became as soon as wise to scramble on Boston’s low-ball provide.
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