BOSTON (AP) - Shortstop Xander Bogaerts and outfielder Jackie Bradley Jr. were among nine Boston players who reached deals on one-year contracts Friday with the AL East champion Red Sox.
Pitchers Joe Kelly, Drew Pomeranz, Eduardo Rodriguez and Brandon Workman, infielder Brock Holt and catchers Sandy Leon and Christian Vazquez also settled.
The agreements left two-time All-Star outfielder Mookie Betts as the only Boston player in salary arbitration. He asked for $10.5 million and the Red Sox offered $7.5 million as players and teams exchanged figures.
Bogaerts will make $7.05 million, up from $4.5 million last season. The 25-year-old hit .273 with 62 RBIs and 15 steals.
A year after becoming an All-Star, Bogaerts saw his power drop from 21 homers to 10. His second half was the problem: He batted .229 with a .339 slugging percentage from June 23 on.
Bradley will get $6.1 million, an increase from $3.6 million last year, when he hit .245 with 17 homers and 63 RBIs.
Although he remained a defensive star, the 27-year-old Bradley had a falloff from his All-Star season in 2016, when he batted .267 with 26 homers and 87 RBIs. The Red Sox reportedly turned down an offer from the Los Angeles Dodgers this offseason to trade him straight up for Yasiel Puig.
Pomeranz gets $8.5 million, a raise from his $4.45 million last year. The 29-year-old lefty went 17-6 with a 3.32 ERA in his first full season with Boston.
After struggling in Boston in 2016, a season in which he made the NL All-Star roster with San Diego before being traded to the Red Sox, Pomeranz tied Chris Sale for the team lead in wins. But in the AL Division Series against Houston - his first career postseason start - he allowed four runs while lasting just two innings.
Workman, a 29-year-old righty, will make $835,000, up from $635,000. He went 1-1 with a 3.18 ERA in a career-high 33 games.
After missing all of 2015 and ’16 with Tommy John surgery, Workman returned in July and had a solid five weeks. On Aug. 20, he had a 1.40 ERA with 20 strikeouts and five walks in 25 2/3 innings. In his last 14 games, though, he struggled to a 6.43 ERA and was left off the postseason roster.
In his first season as a full-time reliever, the right-handed Kelly pitched in 54 games with a 2.79 ERA. He made 23 straight scoreless appearances before giving up a game-winning homer on July 9, then missed a month with a strained left hamstring. He was more inconsistent upon his return, with a 4.98 ERA the rest of the way.
Rodriguez ($2,375,000) demonstrated himself to be a passable fourth or fifth starter. The lefty’s 13-12 record and 4.19 ERA was hurt by a span from June-August when he went 0-4 with a 6.05 ERA while also missing six weeks after falling from the bullpen mound and injuring his knee; he had surgery and is expected to miss all of April, at least.
The 27-year-old Vazquez had the best season of his young career, hitting .290 with five homers and 32 RBIs in 99 games. He caught 42 percent of attempted base-stealers but was also second in the AL in passed balls, with 11.
Leon ($1.95 million) played in a career-high 85 games last year, hitting only .225 but with seven homers and 39 RBIs, matching and setting career-highs, respectively. He threw out 37 percent of attempted base-stealers, down slightly from the 41.2 percent the previous year that was third in the AL.
Holt ($2,225,000) played in just 64 games last year, when he suffered from vertigo. He batted a career-low .200, with no homers and seven RBIs.
At 25, Betts dipped from his 2016 success, when he led the league in total bases and was the runner-up in AL MVP voting. In 2017, his average fell to a career-low .264 (from .318) and he had 24 homers with 102 RBIs (down from 31 and 112), good enough for sixth in the MVP race.
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