As the Winter Meetings wound down at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego on Wednesday, the lobby was buzzing with rumors that the Red Sox were getting close to re-signing star shortstop Xander Bogaerts. Reports that the sides were making progress swirled. Team executives were tight-lipped. From the outside, an agreement seemed likely if not imminent.

But that was not the case. By that point, Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom said late Friday, the Red Sox already knew Bogaerts was almost certainly headed elsewhere. By the time Bloom addressed reporters for the final time around 3 p.m. PT on Wednesday, he knew Bogaerts’ departure was a foregone conclusion. He did not find out that reality from Jon Heyman’s tweet that Bogaerts was headed to the Padres shortly after midnight on the east coast.

“We had a good sense of where it was headed for some time before the deal was actually done,” Bloom said in a lengthy conversation Friday night. “I know what was reported, but that was definitely not what our impression was throughout the day and even the day before.”

If leaks of a Red Sox push were intended to drive San Diego’s price up, it appears they worked. Bogaerts received an 11-year, $280 million mega-deal that far exceeded expectations and what the Red Sox were willing to pay. Bloom declined to confirm the specifics of Boston’s offers (The Boston Globe reported the team went as high as $160 million over six years) but said that the sweepstakes got to a point that made it necessary for the Red Sox to bow out.