Throughout the offseason, Alex Bregman seemed to represent a spectacular fit for the Red Sox: A righthanded hitter who pulls the ball in the air, upgrades the infield defense, and would come to Boston with a championship pedigree. And on Wednesday night, the theory of a spectacular fit became reality.
The Red Sox reached agreement to bring Bregman to Boston on a three-year, $120 million deal, according to industry sources. The agreement, which includes deferrals, includes player opt outs after both the first and second years of the deal.
Bregman — who turns 31 in March — is a two-time All-Star (2018 and 2019 seasons) who owns a career .272/.366/.483 line with 191 homers over nine seasons with the Astros. He hit .260/.315/.453 with 26 homers in 2024 — a season in which he struggled through two months, but made adjustments that yielded a .288/.338/.524 line with 22 homers in his final 94 contests of the season.
Though he dominated lefthanders in the first several years of his career, Bregman has exhibited reverse splits the last three seasons, including a 2024 campaign in which he hit .224/.287/.424 against southpaws.
Both that struggle against lefties and a puzzling decline in Bregman’s walk rate in 2024 — which was driven by both opposing pitchers’ increased willingness to attack him in the strike zone, and a rising chase rate — point to some risk at this stage of his career, a fact that likely informed the Sox’ efforts to acquire him on a relatively short term.
The Sox have added a righthanded hitter who makes plenty of contact — an important attribute for the Red Sox, whose 25 percent strikeout rate was the third highest in baseball last year — and pulls the ball in the air, a needed element for a club hoping to take advantage of the quirky dimensions of Fenway Park.
Bregman has been a force at Fenway, ranking first among players with at least 75 career plate appearances in the ballpark’s history in OPS (1.240), while ranking second in OBP (.490) and slugging (.750). He has seven homers and 16 extra-base hits in 21 career regular-season games in Boston.
The three-year term comes as something of a surprise, given that Bregman rejected a six-year, $156 million bid from the Astros earlier in the offseason — a deal that seemed to represent a baseline. The Sox were reluctant throughout the offseason to consider a deal of such a length for a player in his 30s, resulting in on and off (more recently on) conversations with the Cardinals about the possibility of acquiring Nolan Arenado (who has three remaining years on his contract) in a trade.
But the Sox overcame Bregman’s desire for a longer-term deal by offering both a much higher average annual salary and by including opt-outs after both years of the deal — permitting Bregman an opportunity to return to the market if he has an offensive bounce back season. Meanwhile, the three-year term overlaps a period during which the Sox expect to be teeming with young, inexpensive talent.
While Bregman has spent almost all of his career at third base, it’s possible he’ll play second for the Red Sox. Sox manager Alex Cora, who was Bregman’s bench coach with the Astros in 2017, has said repeatedly that he believes Bregman’s skills profile extremely well at second.
“I always envision him playing in the middle of the diamond, and those were conversations in ‘17. He can adjust, and he has a baseball IQ to do that,” Cora said at the Winter Meetings in December. “Alex is a good player, man. He’s a complete player. He’s a player that’s been on winning teams his whole career. . . . I do believe he can impact a big league team, a championship-caliber team. He’s that type of player.”
In some ways, the agreement represents a full-circle moment for Bregman. In the summer of 2010, though he was just entering his junior year in high school and ineligible for the draft, Bregman accompanied close friend and fellow New Mexico native Blake Swihart to workouts for Red Sox officials and would hit for them.
After he fell in the draft because of a broken finger that washed out his senior year, the Sox drafted him in the 29th round of the 2012 draft. Bregman, however, had decided to enroll at LSU unless he was taken in the first round out of high school. Bregman went to college, and three years later, the Astros took him in the first round (No. 2 overall).
Now, presuming he passes a physical to finalize the deal (typically a formality), Bregman will be joining the Sox as a two-time champion who is expected to bring a competitive edge and playoff experience to a young club.
The contract almost certainly will push the team’s payroll well past the 2025 luxury tax threshold of $241 million — which, in turn, would mark the highest payroll in franchise history.
Because the Astros had extended a qualifying offer to Bregman, the Sox will also have to part with their second-round draft pick (No. 54 overall). However, the team also will gain a draft pick between the second and third rounds as a result of Nick Pivetta reaching an agreement with the Padres.
With the offseason additions of starters Garrett Crochet (White Sox trade) and Walker Buehler (one-year free agent deal), relievers Aroldis Chapman and Justin Wilson, and now Bregman, the Sox appear to have made the sort of upgrades across the roster to give legitimacy to their efforts to jump from an 81-81 campaign back into contention for an AL East title.
Alex Speier can be reached at alex.speier@globe.com. Follow him @alexspeier.