bighurt574

I don't know, even if he keeps it up, as a rental at a decent salary already, he'd probably net a second-tier prospect at best.

Agree, even if Anderson was being dumb, it's on Abreu to be watching the baserunners in front of him.

Eh, if all these 10 year offers came in recently, Boras is going to play them against each other to try raising the price.

If the Sox are offering Harper more than Machado, that just makes them look dumb/desperate, not face saving. Should have offered that to Machado then. And if they're offering Harper a similar $250M guarantee, that's not exactly "respectable" either if he has $300M+ offers.

Not really. It sounds like they had the highest offer on the table for a while until SDG swooped in. I wish we would have ponied up more and probably earlier, but I wouldn't call it insulting. Comps are awfully tough here. You're really shopping for a $10M home that is the most expensive on the market.

If the reports are true that Philly is the only team talking about a long term deal, then they’re basically bidding against themselves. I guess I could see the Sox (and Boras) keeping in touch in case Philly is well aware they’re bidding against themselves and holding back.

And if he hits his potential, that’s a pretty key piece right there.

If Eloy turns into a 40 HR guy with a solid OBP, he’ll be a centerpiece regardless of what WAR says about his defense.

The hold up on years 9 and 10 is almost certainly an owner issue, not a GM issue. No GM has that much job security. Panicking and over paying for Harper would only compound the mistake, however. If they’re willing to top $300M, they should have given it to Machado, he was the better bet.

Didn’t say it was better than SD. Wish they would have just guaranteed it. Or at least guaranteed a 9th year to make it a more interesting choice.

That's actually a pretty solid offer, 550 PA's is easy enough if he's reasonably healthy. But I still hate to lose a guy over that. Wish we would have just guaranteed 10 years.

Think we can package Alonso and Jay to SD for a lottery ticket?

If you're Machado's agent, I'd think you'd still go back to the Sox in that scenario to see if we were bluffing. If he didn't, he must have been really, really confident the price was out of our league, which probably means our offer was nowhere close.

I'd be shocked if we weren't given a chance to top it unless he just wasn't all that interested in playing here. Even if SDG made it an exploding offer, it's not that hard to shoot off a quick text.

Who knows if matching would have gotten it done. SDG could have still upped its offer too, in theory. I'd love to hear the details of whatever our latest offer was.

Even if Hector's source is Manny himself, with at least one newer team like the Padres jumping in, I have no idea how Hector would even know who's ultimately going to pony up the most dough. It's not like he's saying the White Sox are a lifelong dream and Manny will take a discount to play here.

It sounded like the SS stuff was largely an attempt to increase his value. If the top bidder wants him at 3B, he’ll be at 3B. I believe he’s already signaled that, if reports are accurate at least.

A Padres infield with Machado and Tatis for 6+ years would be hard to watch....

You could probably write that same article about Harper wanting Machado to sign first, which is why neither has signed.

That too.

Insurers provide that kind of coverage for companies all the time. PG&E had $1.4 billion in wildfire coverage (not enough to protect it from bankruptcy). For a policy of that size, you could always have some sort of syndicate or layered coverage to spread the risk around some more. No idea what a policy like that would cost. Obviously the odds of a truly career ending injury are low.

If that were the only holdup, they could still do a long term, somewhat backloaded contract now, right?

One interesting factor is that you have MLB and the union talking about some mid-CBA changes that the union certainly hopes will juice the FA market a little. I’m not sure that any of the proposed changes that have been publicly reported are material enough to make a difference on a huge contract like Machado and Harper want, but they may well want to give it another run in a year or two. I’d still be surprised if either signs a 1 year deal though. If I were them, I’d take the best long term deal I can get but push for an opt out by Year 3 at the latest. I wouldn’t be surprised if the stalemate goes into the regular season.

Without Machado or Harper, we're still a year or two away, it's really about developing the current guys anyway. We were never going to win the offseason unless we made a big splash.

Lozano would almost certainly play the offers against each other, even if he doesn't say where the offer is from. It would be malpractice not to, unless Manny just prefers the "mystery team," money aside. But even then, you'd try to spark a bidding war to drive the price up.