Stealth G.O.A.T.

Good to see Bob continuing to report what Kenny tells him.

I personally believe that the Joc rumblings were more related to a Realmuto deal.

I agree with this.

It seems every other team in the market said no repeatedly as well. SD finally did not. I believe the Sox misread that and did not believe the SD offer was at that level. Rick said they heard rumblings about that offer. But I don't think they actually believed it until it went down. They did not want to bid against themselves and that is likely the reason they lost out.

They're still not "horrible deals". It can fall under the potential cost of acquisition of Manny Machado. I was willing to take on $13M for 1 year to do so. That's nothing.

Well, the Sox are in a position in years 1 - 3 to front load the shit out of the contract. So I wouldn't mind them doing that.

I agree with this. The Jay signing and Alonso acquisitions are not bad deals. They are 1 year deals. They aren't bogging down the franchise. I get why the FO did what they did here and don't fault them for it.

I agree with this and I was actually in the group that thought that the Sox were playing it right. I understood the risk involved with my thinking. But I was wrong. I thought the Sox FO and Jerry would be more aggressive at the $280 - 300M range.

The Sox should have bid more to stay in the pciture. I get the whole "not negotiating against yourself" position that the Sox have. I actually agree with it. But you risk a team coming in that bids aggressively. Especially in comparison to what the teams in the market were bidding prior. SD is that team. The Texas Rangers were that team with ARod. The Sox misread the negotiations in their final stages. There is no arguing that. @iamshack would not even argue that.

I'd rather risk it and try to sign Harper. Pollock is a good player. But he's never healthy.

@iamshack, good call on this.

It likely helped and would have been something that swayed him if the money was close. But it was never making up for a $50M difference in guaranteed money.

I was actually not aware of that. Appreciate you sharing that with me. This is interesting. It probably furthers a point just made in this thread that the Sox did not get to counter with a final offer after the SD meeting.

LOL!! Yes, the one and only........

LOL!!!!!!!!!

I agree with you fathom. 100%. I have been highly criticized for that belief (and one other belief) by several people. @iamshack can vouch for that. LOL

I will vouch for this. I personally actually believed they were handling things well. But I was not aware of the so-called $300M ceiling. Honestly, up to the Padres final offer, they probably were in the lead and handled it well. But they didn't close and that's all that matters at the end of the day.

Uh, what?

His point is the information provided trickles down from the front office. The Sox were shocked they didn't land Manny. If the Sox were confident and that trickles to those providing information to SoxTalk, what can anyone do? Given they were $50M short on the guarantee, they shouldn't have been that confident, but they were. But SD likely stepped up to the plate the day before he signed or that morning and MM/Lozano pounced. I have no doubt up until that point, MM was headed to Chicago. Unfortunately for the Sox, it tends to happen too much. Off the top of my head ARod, Vizquel (much smaller scale contract-wise), Torii Hunter, obviously Machdado, and even on the trade front, Miguel Cabrera. There are probably others I'm leaving out.

They may have been willing to go the distance for him and just botched the negotiations. Perhaps they didn't believe SD was at $300M? We'll never know. Maybe there was a legit cap on what they were willing to pay Manny? That's not shocking either. Perhaps it was a mix of all of the above? At the end of the day, it seems the Phillies, Yankees, and possibly some others weren't willing to go $300M for Manny either.

True, but what else is there to talk about? Adam Engel?

That's possible. We obviously don't know what the White Sox contract would have looked like. I believe he would have had some kind of signing bonus though if he signed with the Sox. I guess we'll never know.

I just don't think his deal will be smaller than Manny's. Regardless of the amount of time it takes.

I didn't find that to be overly creative to be honest. But at the end of the day, it got the deal done. Which is all that matters. MM will pay significant taxes post 2019. I believe players pay taxes based on where each individual game is played. He will be playing a significant number of games in San Diego (81 per season), LA, and San Francisco.

If giving Manny 10 years, $300M was ok (and I agree it was 100%), giving Harper 10 years, $325 - 350M would be fine. Neither would hurt the team. Paying Harper that money is the equivlant to paying him $2.5 - 5M more per season. That isn't going to hinder any MLB team these days. From my perspective, paying either of those contracts would be fine.