After an extremely impressive first full big league season, Mookie Betts received a roughly 10 percent pay bump from the Red Sox, going from a $514,500 salary in 2015 to a $566,000 salary for the coming season. With Betts and Xander Bogaerts, the Sox chose to reward performance in a way that some smaller-club teams do not.
Betts expressed appreciation for the raise, but also made clear that his focus as a professional is on something other than his paycheck.
“That’s all kind of irrelevant to going and playing the game,” said Betts. “It’s obviously good that I got a little boost, but I’ve still got to go play, do what I did last year or something similar. That’s kind of my view on it. It’s cool, but it doesn’t mean you can stop playing.”
That same outlook helps to explain why Betts said that he and the team didn’t broach the subject of a long-term deal. Ultimately, he’s more interested in his playing career right now than in considering whatever wealth the game might afford him – even at a time when (as relayed by Buster Olney of ESPN) David Ortiz views him as a potential $250 million player.
“[A long-term deal] is not part of the discussion right now. I’m just focused on going and playing this year. We’re going year-by-year [in contracts],” said Betts. “I block all that out. I know that I have to go play each and every day.”
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