Jake

I strongly suspect that Machado's team told his suitors that if they would give the thumbs up to 10 years 300 with a mid-contract opt out, they'd accept on the spot and would not go to any other teams to match or beat it. He probably went to each team in order of preference, presumably Philly, then Sox, then Padres. Sox didn't get some last minute call because the point of the offer was to close out the process and make a team jump a little higher than they otherwise might have for the certainty of ending the bidding. Sox assumed nobody would go for the deal and they were wrong. All that being said, if you were willing to go to that number or some other number, there's not really any good reason to lay that out there after the fact. This is especially true if you have any interest in getting Harper. Even if we want to be cheap on Harper, to try to play the long odds of scoring him at a discount you have to signal that you could never pay anything but discount price.

Wouldn't an opt out make him more motivated to continue producing rather than rest on his laurels?

To be frank, this hasn't changed my anticipated attention level at all. I may be paying less attention during ST just because without a Machado acquisition (and presumably no Bryce) I doubt we'll be players for the remaining free agents. I was looking forward to seeing if we'd try to grab some of the other remaining talent after getting a big fish, but now I strongly doubt we do that and am not sure if I'd like it if we did. But I want to see these guys play. I really like everyone in our infield (despite management's stupidity regarding where they should play), I'm very ready for Eloy, and we have a bunch of interesting pitchers. What else am I going to be watching every night anyway?

The last thing I would ever want is for the Sox to move. I'd be a man without a team and I doubt I'd be very enthusiastic about picking up a new one.

It would potentially be useful in the service of driving a hard bargain with Harper to make a bunch of noise about your inability to afford a slightly cheaper player, but I think the safest assumption is that we don't value Harper as highly as we did Machado and we know that valuation won't get the job done.

I understood the "no magic number" comment to mean that they might give 10 years and 300 to somebody, just not Manny Machado. That might be just be a weasely way of saying if they got 100 million discount on Mike Trout they'd take it, but also might mean that perhaps they're not as high on Machado as some other players in the same tier.

I'd like to land Harper just because, but I'm cooling off on it as a good baseball move (considering price, etc.).

In this organization, I think one of the things that has kept KW/Hahn employed is that they may well have been basically overruled by JR on a number of big picture decisions that put the team in bad shape, like supposedly JR insisting they not rebuilding in the early 2010s and keep trying to go for it instead.

Why would you move to get further away from the White Sox

I'm mad about Machado and all but to be honest I'm super excited for the season to start and will be watching even more closely than last year.

I'm not against signing Harper, but I do believe that even if Harper is better our marginal gain is likely to be less because we don't have great internal options for the infield in the way we do for the outfield (long term).

I think it's very plausible and even likely that Harper is better than Machado, but he also is a poorer fit with our organizational depth. In a couple years, we should have a lot of young outfielders competing for one CF spot assuming that Harper and Eloy man the corners.

The difference in the contract's value to the player with or without an opt-out is enormous. That's a big thing to work out before you start throwing offers around.

No reason to risk your money on these vets when it's so hard to tell how long it will be before the team is competing.

Wouldn't surprise me if the way this deal went down is the Padres gave Machado's people a take it or leave it deal. Say yes now or we're not going to give you an offer this good again. But Kenny's comments make it appear we wouldn't have matched if given the chance anyway.

Makes you wonder how much the Padres outbid the field. I'll take all KW's statements as face value: We probably had the high offer until now and we weren't going to $300 million. So what does Harper go for if the only team willing to give $300 million to Machado is out of the race?

If the Sox sign Bryce Harper on similar terms, does that change your views on this?

Sox should have done this deal if it is accurate that there's a single opt out after year 5. Surprised we would have come to the table at all if we weren't willing to go for him at this price. There's still a good chance we wind up feeling glad we didn't make the deal, but this is what everyone should have expected Machado to get. And there's of course a chance he makes it well worth the expense.

If there are no opt outs in this deal, then I'm really disappointed that the Sox couldn't match/beat it.

Let's hear about opt-outs.

Why would anyone think the team is going to be good this year? That's not my expectation at all and it wouldn't change even if we added Machado.

I suppose tomorrow Yoan will take grounders at 2B and we'll have rapid fire speculation about what that means

I don't know. Who is the backup 2B?

To me that feels more likely than the Sox moving Yoan there permanently