Roughneck

Not that I believe this guy, but it fits the timeline. The negotiating is done over the phone, and most contracts aren't signed in person. The Sox fax Lozano a contract, Manny signs it, and they fax it to the main office. It would then be contingent on the physical in the next day or two, and could be voided if he failed. So *if* they agreed on something or are super close and working out the finer details, they could be expecting Manny to come in tomorrow night for a physical and a presser on Friday. But like everything else, I have no reason to believe this report.

I read that they soured on Ortiz because he couldn't hit the other way and sacrifice. The "Twins way." The Red Sox made him huge by letting him be a dead pull hitter and, uh, getting him the right prescriptions.

But do the Giants have any contracts bad enough to make them want Heyward's deal? Cueto is going to miss 2019 and was injured all last year, but I don't think they have seen enough to decide that he's shot and unload him. I think they'd much rather have him for 2020 than Heyward.

But the mutual option part is always tricky. If he's still good enough where the Sox still want him at $35 mil a year, he's going to be good enough to opt-out so he can get a contract with the next 2 years guaranteed, rather than the possibility of the Sox dumping him after year 8 for $5 mil. I don't know Machado's line of thinking, but I don't know that the mutual option would have any impact there. Still, I think you're on the right track.

I don't know, but I know that tweet will come roughly 5 minutes before Fathom quotes it and says "Bad news, guys."

Sign and trade. They can't trade Harper until like May, so they'll sit him for a month and then trade him for Heyward. The salaries don't even out, so the Cubs will likely have to give up Darvish to make it work. Regardless, the Giants are well aware that it's Theo's league, so they are going to make this happen.

I'm telling you, if Manny had in his head the last several years that he's going to get a $300 mil contract, that could be the holdup here. I don't think the Sox are at $175m, as WSD and our people with connections laughed at that report. But even a deal at $225 or $250 mil is not enough if Manny has a $300 million number in his head. He'll eventually have to take less, but he's not eager to do so. We had several reports of Manny wanting $300 million, the first team to get to $300 mil gets him, etc. I think at this point that's his "buy it now" price and it's an important number for him, even if it looks apparent that he's not going to reach it.

I assume so, yes. But if Manny if furious because he expected that $300 mil or the title of biggest contract ever for a few days before Harper signed, I could see it. Manny is losing nothing by holding out here. Maybe he has blind hope that some team will have their entire offseason be a failure and decide in the middle of February that they want to give him $300 mil. I'm not saying that's likely, but I could see him still holding out hope that someone will step up with that bigger deal he wants.

Not if he sees himself as a $300 mil player, as pretty much everybody thought he would be back in November.

So basically, Buster has no info at all on this. But adding "could go higher" leaves him room to save face when Manny signs for something like $250 mil.

I don't know, but it makes the worrying about the Sox taking Yonder from the Indians and giving them more money to spend look more foolish. They are still going to trade Kluber and not extend Lindor. Yonder's 9 million will just stay in the owner's pocket. The Indians are going to sleepwalk to the division title this year and maybe next year if the Sox still aren't ready, but they have no intentions of winning a championship.

The Indians signing Belle to a longterm deal before 97 would have killed them longterm, but they win the World Series with him in 1997 and possibly again in 98. Grady Sizemore and Travis Hafner went from looking like first-ballot hall of famers to falling off the face of the earth after both got money, and that probably made things worse. But Cliff Lee, Sabathia, Manny, Thome. They had way too many superstar players who they couldn't keep in house.

I don't think the Twins really compare. The Twins had a few stars. Mauer was incredible, Morneau, Santana, Liriano before his arm exploded. But they mostly just had a bunch of mediocre players who did a professional job. They got rid of Johan at the exact right moment, and they didn't lose any star players to free agency.

Well, it's Phil Rogers, so it doesn't have to make sense. But I took I to mean that Manny would be happy signing a 7 year deal, as opposed to the 10 year deal he was looking for, which clearly doesn't exist.

All of those things are accurate and none of them are defending it. An old asshole forwarding chainmail and conspiracies is pretty much what we have. Not diminishing it to say that. It doesn't directly relate to the Cubs. The family trust purchased the team and his children run it. If these were emails directly from Tom, that would be an entirely different story. And this has literally nothing to do with Sinclair, other than "I don't like this story, and I also don't like Sinclair."

Literally nobody is defending it here.

Like everything else, all good things have to be made bad. MLB Network was great the first few years, then they started pushing NYY/BOS/Cubs/LA as much as ESPN. The MLB app was great, but now it has to create "content." One of my first experiences with this foolishness was 5 or so years back, in Jim Harbaugh's last year with the 49ers. I got a notification from the NFL app of "Locker room discontent? Rumors of team revolting against Harbaugh." I was shocked. I'm thinking "isn't this the official league app which is supposed to deal in actual news? It's running with rumors?" But that's how everything is today. And of course, it comes from the mainstream news, which time and again steps on rakes by running with soon-debunked stories in the efforts to be the first to report it. All about dem clicks.

Yeah, it pisses me off. I don't have the ESPN app because ESPN blows. I wish the MLB app could just give me actual news. Not only official signings, because we'd likely find out that he signed a day or more before it's officially announced. But if Rosenthal is reporting Manny signed, I want to know. If Will Leitch wrote an article speculating if the Padres could sign Manny and Harper, I *don't* want to be notified of that.

Right, but he has no role currently, right? If he does, it's a problem. If not, it's a nothing story.

It's always fun to see the Cubs crapped on, but I literally could not care less about this. This guy is the father of the Cubs owners. He has no role in the franchise. But it is fun to see the media pivot back and forth between "this was obtained via nefarious means, so we should ignore it" and "Yay leaks!" depending on the source.

Or Machado Madness, in nod to the Macho Man. Also, if we sign Machado, I think we need a "Machado Man" cheering section of people dressed like the Village people. Minus the assless chaps.

Right, but that still doesn't help them to shed money to sign Machado, which is Fathom's fear.

Agree to disagree here. It took Moncada hitting .235 for him to put up an OBP 15 points lower than Jay. I don't think he will win any batting titles, but Yoan will improve on that average. The only way I see anyone predicting Jay to get on base more is either expecting a fluke fountain-of-youth type season from him or just thinking in general that Yoan is a bust and won't improve over his age 23 season.

Not only that, but the Giants are a semi well-run organization which has won 3 titles this decade. The Marlins and Athletics are there to self-immolate to make the Yankees better. The Giants aren't going to do that.

Okay, because you said "next year." I don't think Yoan is going to have a rough a year as he did in 2018, and I think his OBP will be considerably higher than Jay's.