Red Sox sign RHP Garrett Whitlock to four-year, $18.75M extension

The Red Sox have announced a four-year extension with right-hander Garrett Whitlock, with club options also covering the 2027 and 2028 seasons.  Whitlock will earn $18.75M over the four guaranteed years (2023-26) of the deal, according to MassLive.com’s Chris Cotillo, and the 2027 option is worth $8.25M with a $1M buyout.  The 2028 option would pay Whitlock $10.5M, with a $500K buyout.  With escalators, the option years can be worth up to $4M more in extra money per season.

Whitlock was already controlled via arbitration through the 2026 season, so the extension gives the Red Sox some cost certainty and also some extra control over his first two free-agent years.  Sean McAdam of The Boston Sports Journal has the annual breakdown, starting with a $1M signing bonus.  Whitlock earns $1M in 2023, $3.25M in 2024, $5.2MM in 2025 and $7.25M in 2026.

If the escalators both max out, Whitlock will land a total of $44M over the six-year term of the extension.  Cotillo adds that Whitlock is also still eligible for the league’s bonus pool for pre-arbitration players both this season and in 2023, so the righty has the opportunity to land even more money.

It’s not a bad payday for a pitcher who is barely a year removed from his MLB debut and who has still never pitched at the Triple-A level.  An 18th-round pick for the Yankees in the 2017 draft, Whitlock had some strong numbers in his first three pro seasons but underwent Tommy John surgery in July 2019.  Without any sort of 2020 season, Whitlock was seen as something of an under-the-radar choice when the Red Sox selected him away from New York in the December 2020 Rule 5 Draft.

As it turned out, Whitlock now stands as one of the best Rule 5 success stories in recent memory.  The rookie posted a 1.96 ERA, 49.7% grounder rate, 27.2% strikeout rate and 5.7% walk rate over 73 1/3 innings, acting as a lockdown multi-inning reliever out of the Red Sox bullpen.  Whitlock’s surprise emergence was a major factor in Boston’s run to the ALCS, and the team has now locked him up as a contributor for the better part of the decade.

The contract escalators are tied in part to innings totals, which reflects the possibility that Whitlock might eventually go from the bullpen to the rotation.  There was some consideration given to deploying Whitlock as a starter this year, but the Sox are opting to be as flexible as possible with the righty’s usage.  Whitlock will be teamed with Rich Hill in piggyback fashion to begin the year, which also frees Whitlock up to pitch in other games in high-leverage situations.

This is the third extension of Chaim Bloom’s tenure as Boston’s chief baseball officer, and the second involving a relief pitcher, following the two-year, $18.75M pact finalized with Matt Barnes last summer.  Despite the similar guaranteed salaries, there isn’t much of a comp between the two contracts, as Barnes was just a few months away from entering the free-agent market.  Whitlock, on the other hand, turns 26 in June, and thus wouldn’t have been hitting the open market until he was on the verge of his age-31 season.

While his $247.5K draft bonus was larger than usual for an 18th-rounder, and the new pre-arbitration pool provides an extra avenue for more earnings for pre-arb players, it isn’t hard to see why Whitlock (with a TJ surgery already on his resume) would be eager to guarantee himself a life-changing fortune so early in his career.  There was obvious appeal from Boston’s side as well, since the extension is a good deal for the team even if Whitlock remains “only” a shutdown reliever.  Should Whitlock eventually emerge as a starter, the Red Sox stand to benefit from this early investment in the right-hander.