Roughneck

Wait a minute, our second baseman was playing third, so they had someone else play second?! Holy fuck. Contract the franchise.

blinkingguy.gif

This is counterfeit Chinese garbage. Not only is it stealing money from the teams and players, but the jerseys look like trash and fit like they were sewn by blind people. Wrong colors, wrong fonts, bad fabrics, and crappy stitching. Also, counterfeiting ventures fund terrorism and organized crime. Buy a T-shirt at Marshall's if you really need Sox gear but don't feel like paying full price.

Not like we have anything else to talk about. Accounts on Twitter posting false rumors, random people tweeting they heard from their cop friend that Manny was going to sign, The death and resurrection of Dan Clark, and Hector Gomez commenting on every tweet about Machado. This is all we have.

True. And more so than this, he wants to be seen as one of the best players ever when he retires. If he plays a decade in that ballpark, he will be losing 80-100 homers off his career total. No way he does that.

We gained 34 pages in the last 20 hours. Weekends are slower, but if we get a few rumors early next week, we can probably reach 1,000 pages Thursday.

But more likely than not, Harper signs with the Phillies or White Sox. Other than possibly the Padres, that is Machado's entire market, too. So if Harper signs with the Phillies and the Sox then have no competition for Machado, they probably aren't going to up their offer.

Over the length of the contract, we're talking about tens of millions of dollars in difference. That is going to have some influence.

Right, but as other mentioned, the Padres will have 19 road games a year between LAD and SF. Throw in an interleague Angels series every few years, too. So instead of 50%, it's 62.5%.

Arenado is not going to sign and extension before Manny signs. He has another year left and no reason to jump the gun. If he's re-upping with the Rockies, he will let Manny set the market, then sign a deal for slightly more.

Heyman is a dope. His market is not likely to improve when Harper goes off the board; quite the opposite. Discounting the Giants (Harper doesn't want that park) and maybe the Nats getting back in, his suitors are the same suitors as Machado. Maybe the Sox get antsy and decide to give Manny an extra $50 mil after Bryce signs. But more likely, Machado just loses an interested team and therefore more leverage. Right now the Sox are bidding against the Phillies and this boogieman of the Padres maybe wanting to spend. Remove the Phillies from that equation and it's just the Sox vs. the Padres scarecrow.

Did you guys ever think that maybe Yonder has just been spelling it wrong all these years?

1) The Padres are leveraged with crazy debt payments due to deals the previous owner made. 10% of their operating budget is paying down debt. 2) They signed Hosmer to a huge contract last year, and Hosmer is not a good player. 3) Outside of the Hosmer deal, the current owner has cried poor about all other spending opportunities. 4) Manny reportedly wants to be on the east coast or as close as possible. 5) The Padres reportedly haven't made a preliminary offer yet, and Lozano won't let them meet Manny until he gets a serious offer from them. 6) Petco Park is bad for homers. I don't think Manny is as concerned about his legacy as Harper, so I could see him signing to play in a SD/SF and lose a bunch of homers from his career total. But the money would have to be much bigger than anywhere else. I think it's either the Sox or Phillies. The Padres are in reports because they want attention and to show their fans they tried. Lozano is keeping the Padres in the news because he needs another team for leverage against the Sox. I have no concern at all about Manny going to San Diego.

I don't know that it would ever be good bet to give a huge contract to a closer who was last seen getting rocked, as Kimbrel did last fall. The only contract I would give him would be a 1-year deal with intent to flip him. No thanks.

We're discussing the possibility based on Shack's article and the few nonsense tweets people shared. While I don't think it's going to happen, you can ignore Hahn's comments. He's trying to get the best deal on each guy, and if he basically says "Yeah, we'll spend $65 mil a year on these guys" he then has a harder time convincing Machado he can't go up from $28 mil to $30 mil a year. He's not going to tip his hand.