Jake

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

One thing that is interesting to wonder is what kind of signs there would be if we had basically withdrawn from the sweepstakes.

I think he does actually have a very strong arm, it's just not high on the list of reasons to move him from one position to another.

One thing I'm pretty confident about: If Yoan can't cut it at 2B, he'll be worse at 3B.

I have to think it's more likely that we're playing a very weak hand with Lozano to show we have a long-term option at every spot in the infield.

I think that if Manny insists on playing SS or Sox scouts feel Manny showed an ability to stick at SS, this is a plausible and probably the best configuration.

Good for him to take his career into his own hands and not do things he felt were hurting him. Hope it works.

I've not seen enough to see that as an assumption. Who plays 2nd? Yolmer?

For me, the easiest thing is it's a bad deal if he has a unilateral opt-out after 2 years. 3 years may be too early too. When you sign a player to a contract, you're hoping to at least get exactly what you paid for. But for a long term deal, you know it's more likely you end up either doing really well (player outperforms the deal) or very poorly (player is much worse than the deal). If you give an early opt-out, you almost can't do well — if he outperforms the deal, he becomes a free agent and then gets a bigger paycheck — but you're exposed to 100% of the risk of things going badly. For us, you enter the deal knowing that Year 1 is very unlikely to be a championship year so you want him to do well but his performance in that year isn't very important. And so Year 2 is the first year you start to really get a payoff if he outperforms the contract. If you risk losing him after Year 2, then you have practically no upside in the contract. It's not a ton better if he can leave after Year 3.

The potential positive spin is, as always, that we might avoid a bad deal.

We would be more willing to outbid if our window is open versus now, when we can't risk a lot of money if the deal gives the guy the chance to dip out as soon as we get good.

deferrals = not serious

Opt outs are so important. If he can opt out after two good years in SD, then we can outbid them in two years and if he flops then SD is hamstrung for a decade by a bad deal.