On Monday’s edition of Zolak & Bertrand, Zo and Beetle explained why Xander Bogaerts leaving hurts so much.

• There's no excuse this time...

  Marc Bertrand: Mookie Betts was young. The team was sort of in a financial tight situation. It was going to be, you know, difficult to figure that out. They could have, they chose not to. But, you know, they could look at and say, listen, we’re sort of up against it here. We’ve made some bad decisions. We got a lot of payroll. We’re in a tight spot. This time, none of those excuses apply. None of them do.

  Scott Zolak: You couldn’t have mismanaged this one any worse. And I’m with you on the Betts thing. Like, he was such a young, dynamic player. You appreciate him for his game. But I don’t think there was the attachment the way fans had it with (Xander) Bogaerts. Like, this guy would face the music. He would be the only one that would talk to the press when things were bad. Clubhouse leader like you said. The worst thing now is, I keep going back to the All-Star Game where he and Devers were sitting there laughing. I don’t know which reporter they talked to, but laughing about the offer that was made. You know, like that’s the leader of your clubhouse and that’s your best next young player. And it’s sort of already developing this mentality that they’re going to build this thing like Tampa.

• Listen to the full segment!

• Check out Xander Bogaerts comments on joining the Padres

  Xander Bogaerts is excited to play with this team in front of the #FriarFaithful!@Padres pic.twitter.com/R76eILZ8k2

  — Bally Sports San Diego (@BallySportsSD) December 9, 2022

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