Based on their public-facing quotes, Manny Machado signing elsewhere for a reasonable market rate was not the worst-case scenario for White Sox players. The fact that he signed somewhere at least provides relief from what had been redundant yet understandable:
“What do you think?” [Yonder] Alonso said with a smile when asked if he was ready to be done with this line of questioning. […]
“F— yeah,” said Tim Anderson. “S—, maybe y’all can stop asking me now. I could care less about (Bryce) Harper and Machado’s situation. I know where we’re headed. We have a great group of guys here.
“We’re gonna be South Side regardless. Nobody’s decision determines what we got going on in this locker room. I feel we have a great group of guys here. We’re gonna do something special. The White Sox are moving in the right direction. One decision won’t dictate our season.”
Outside of quibbling with the idea of “right direction” — they’re going to need to show their work come late March — I began to like the idea of Anderson’s swag getting its own spotlight, if nothing else.
Then I saw this float by on Twitter:
Even if it weren’t accompanied by “OMG THEY HAVE MANNY MACHADO,” that “5.4” wounds me. When the White Sox’ ZiPS projections come out, I’m guessing you’re not going to get to 5.4 WAR from the top two White Sox, whether you’re combining hitters or pitchers. I’m also guessing one of those hitters won’t be on the roster Opening Day.
That’s what the White Sox are missing out on — well-rounded star projection being part of the expectations, not an upper-level outcome.
There really isn’t a way to get over that, at least without invoking sour grapes. If Machado turns out to be a dud, it still doesn’t reflect well on the White Sox’ pro scouting, which is what undermined the last rebuild. If Machado is great, but eventually goes the way of most 10-year deals … I just didn’t care.
I never agonized over a 10-year commitment to Machado because so much can change over 10 years. It just might be hard to see that because, for the White Sox, nothing happened for them over the last 10 years. The Sox had they had the most dominant pitcher their franchise has ever seen, and yet they failed to make the postseason even once. Moreover, without Machado, the White Sox might come up well short of their Opening Day payroll from a decade ago:
- 2009: $96.1 million
- 2019: $84.1 million (projected)
And all the while, Kenny Williams and Rick Hahn remain the top two decision-makers under Jerry Reinsdorf.
I wanted the Sox to sign Machado for the same reason the Lerners wanted Jayson Werth for the Washington Nationals back in 2011. Werth signed for seven years and $126 million, the first major free agent signing of the Nationals era and a contract thought to be another Scott Boras miracle. While he was a little overpaid on the whole and was a liability over the last two seasons, he helped them get out of the NL East cellar and into regular postseason appearances, which allowed the Nats to hand out nine-figure contracts to Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg and Ryan Zimmerman.
I doubt the Lerners had any regrets about inefficiency, because the Nats after Werth in no way resembled the Nats before him. I thought Machado could do the same thing for the Sox. Bring him in to supplement some pre-arb stars, and maybe we never look at a $120 million payroll as ambitious again.
But given the way the Sox stopped short on Machado, and given reports like this one …
… I’m not expecting them to ever outbid the league for a star player in his prime. It brought to mind a line from a Cigar Aficionado profile of Reinsdorf in 1995:
Throughout the fall and winter, he was still driven by the dream: to create a World Series winner in a business climate that made sense to him.
If the White Sox are to pursue top free agents without ever increasing the market’s top line, they’re going to have to get good first. If they have to get good first, they’re going to have to convert on lesser free agent signings — you know, the things that broke the first attempt at rebuilding. It doesn’t reassure me when Hahn says “the money will be spent,” because he’ll be the one spending it. The truth remains that the successful rebuilding teams hit bottom and reached the top with new owners and new front offices.
The White Sox are trying to change. They’ve added to their R&D department, they’ve added scouts, they’re integrating technology and those who can interpret it at the minor-league levels. Alas, until there’s any success to point to, they look like firmware updates for internal components that can never be brought back to relevance. They’re Major League Baseball’s Blackberry, still bringing a product to market every year, but every headline garnered mostly acknowledges that they’re still alive and nothing more.
The White Sox had an opportunity to force a reckoning with an exciting new wrinkle, but in the end, they let the Padres make Machado’s decision an easy one. Now it’s back to hoping that guys like Anderson, Yoan Moncada, Reynaldo Lopez and Eloy Jimenez can force everybody to reconsider them. Good things are still eminently possible, but it stings knowing it could’ve been so much easier.
Someone asked this in the other thread, but do they realize that driving up the price for the Phillies would be a good thing? Supposedly MLB teams compete with each other, so they should want to saddle a competitor with a higher salary. More likely they just don’t want to bother.
Right? That quote came as close to the Sox saying “yeah, we colluded to help keep MLB salaries down” as possible. That’s a pretty wild thing to say in the middle of an offseason where MLB players can’t stop talking about how upset they’re getting.
That Phil Rogers is the only source keeps me from hammering it heavily.
Yeah, I mean you don’t think a team would be dumb enough to openly admitting to colluding to keep labor costs down, right?
You’d think that, but you’d also think an actor paying guys to beat him up wouldn’t pay with a personal check, so…
I don’t get this
@ParisSox Here:
First I heard of any of this. Wow. Just wow.
Maybe they think they were used to boost Machado’s price but never had a real chance. I thought I read somewhere that the Phillies were given a chance to beat the offer but I didn’t read that about the Sox.
The price was established at the outset of the offseason and the White Sox refused to meet it. It dragged on for months because nobody else would meet it either, and they figured they had him cornered. Soon as somebody met his minimum asking price, they backed down.
“It doesn’t reassure me when Hahn says ‘the money will be spent,’ because he’ll be the one spending it.” -Tweetable quote from an astute analysis.
I’m choosing to focus only on the TA swagger today because everything else is infuriating and exhausting. If TA backs it up, then I can still have a little bit of fun this year.
It’s mostly infuriating for me. Get your OBP over .300 and then maybe start talking shit. ?
That wasn’t talking shit.
@soxfanpa, I agree. He’s confident in the team. We might disagree with his confidence, but he wasn’t talking shit about anybody else. And I’d rather see confidence yesterday than, “Yeah, Manny was our only hope, we’re going to suck now.”
I mean, it wasn’t infuriating to me. And i like the fire. But if we are being realistic before you say something like we are going to run over you or whatever he said… we need to have someone step up and get on Machado’s level. Because tim sure hasn’t and neither has yoan or Lopez or whomever the hell else we are talking about.
They don’t even have anyone on Ben Zobrist’s level right now, let alone Manny.
If they don’t have a philosophy against opt-out clauses, then why did they abandon the contingent option structure they floated earlier?
Their base $250m/8+incentives looks a lot better with an earlyish team option for 9/10 and a player opt-out if they decline, rather than vesting options.
I was wondering if it’s ever been posited that the White Sox invented the opt out in a way with Belle’s contract that allowed him to leave mid-way. I don’t know of any earlier examples. Do any of you?
I think straight up player options pre-date Belle’s clause but I can’t think of an example off the top of my head. The unique part wasn’t the opt-out but the top 5 salary escalator.
Reinsdorf’s reputation has leaned on the Belle signing for quite some time. But let’s face it, a clause he inserted to make the contract look more attractive to the player was really just a way to give him an out. Belle went out and crushed the franchise record for homers in a season and Jerry decided he didn’t want to pony up for a raise per the terms of the very contract he lured Belle in with in the first place. He tried similar optics with Machado, making it look like they offered more money when the guarantee was much less and the only guarantee was they would do everything possible not to pay those last two years. Unfortunately for him, nobody really buys it.
Theoretically there’s nothing that would have prevented the Sox from just benching him to ensure that option didn’t kick in? Technically the same thing we can do with Yonder this year?
His remedy would be a grievance for breach of contract. His team would have to show bad faith on the part of the White Sox.
That’s a lot more difficult and costly than getting AJ Preller to show him the money.
Manny Machado aside, the even bigger issue is they’ve completely wasted this off-season in improving the roster. They went 62-100 last year, nobody expected them to win the WS this year but they had to start moving towards competitiveness. They’re acting like they’ll just be able to snap their fingers and compete. They never make the moves necessary to open their competitive window and are going to start running out of team control on players like Rodon, then before you know it Moncada, Giolito etc.
They haven’t even gotten back to 2016 bad and they’re acting like it’s all in the bag. Their roster construction looks like the underpants gnomes from South Park.
Step 1: Tear down the roster
Step 2: ??????
Step 3: Win multiple championships
that step by step is perfect
they couldnt go to 300 mil… cause they need money to eventually pay the guys they hope will be good, 4 years from now before they walk…. .let that logic play around and this is basically something rick hahn actually said
That’s like the old comic strip where a kid is solving a complicated math problem. The first frame was him standing in front a long equation. Frame 2 was “Then a miracle happens”. Frame 3 was the correct answer. I think the FO is hoping a miracle happens and all these guys get good together and then sign below market extensions. This FO is so bad at their jobs it’s laughable. And it all leads right up to the top. This has Jerry’s fingerprints all over it.
“Jerry’s fingerprints” hell. This has Jerry’s DNA left in seminal deposits at the crime scene.
Reinsdorf has made his fellow investors a boatload of money since owning the team while holding the line against labor costs. That’s his legacy.
This
I think the Sox can do without the “M Word.” Such is my new nickname for him. And I’m glad they aren’t giving him his $300 M’s. Time will tell if the Sox spend well when it counts in the future. Let the “M Word” do for the Padres what he did for the Orioles last year.
Be awesome at baseball?
Whenever I see a Sox fan ask “what’s so good about Manny Machado?” I think that maybe we have the front office we deserve.
Just make a list of his top 10 comps. Like half are in the hall of fame.
We might have a new record in + and – disparity between two different comments
I think that’s the new downvote record.
pnoles is going to have to break out his rec accounts or the emergency admin tools if he wants to neutralize that one.
After 45 years of being a White Sox fan, pretty sure this guy’s used to being shit on.
There’s that famous JR quote I’m paraphrasing about how he’d rather break even and win than lose and make money and I’m starting to think we have enough evidence to directly contradict that.
Really I’m just depressed with the Sox because I felt lied to. Like if they couldn’t do $300 mill for 10 years, the number he asked for and got, then they weren’t ever really in on him from the start and he’s been the big target for like 2 years. I’m tired of ownership that’s content to rent-seek and despite being insanely profitable and having a great deal with where they play, refuse to make his product better. And I’m sure at some point we’ll be blamed for not going to the park, like the Sox haven’t been insanely profitable every year.
He was hoping to beat Stanton. That was the initial goal, and $300 million was the floor. It should have been clear after TWO MONTHS of him not signing anywhere that he was not messing around about that. $300 million was the discount, and it was the only discount any team serious about signing him was likely to get.
And Don Cooper better not say one gd word about attendance this year.
He’s way past breaking even, even with signing Machado.
Seriously jerry is so full of crap. These teams are in the 200-250 mil range without selling a ticket, a winning team like Boston brought in close to 450 mil I believe last year.
agreed Nate. and you could argue his presence would offset some of his cost by increasing revenues.
Ive done this before but its good for what you just said.
On national average a fan spends 40 bucks at a major league baseball game. 81 games, the difference in revenue from an MLB team averaging 10,000 fans a game (which is where the sox will be this year) , vs say 30,000 fans a game (which if the sox were consistently good is an easy number to obtain) is 20,000 x 40 x 81 = 64,800, 000 , you could afford harper and machado just on an increase in ticket sales….
There was an article I can’t find about how when the Tigers posted losses, they didn’t actually lose money due to it not counting the shared revenue of the $1 billion annual revenue the owners share from the MLB marketing company and all the money owners get from owning adjacent properties and other ventures the baseball team increases the profitability of.
The Sox aren’t going to lose half the ticket sales they managed to retain through the first 2 years of the rebuild. Even in the 90s attendance didn’t dip below 1.3m.
IDK Ive never seen the fan base this upset, and ticket sales vs game attendance factors into the equation a bit different
The signal to noise ratio is bad because of social media. Sox fans were angrier about the work stoppage+missed postseason and then the White Flag trade.
As a 9 year old I cant quite remember how mad I was about that.
Even call it 19,000 as oppose to 39,000
The loss in fan attendance revenue is pretty dramatic.
And as previously stated the organization pocketed what about 100-150 mil each of the last 2 seasons…
It pays to tank
Those two are something they did. This is something they didn’t do.
They did put together a losing offer and try to spin it for their White Sox
rubesfaithful.They also have at least one or two marquee players throughout the 90s, so there’s something to be said about minimal drawing power during that era.
What portion of a team’s revenue is driven by fan attendance? Does anyone have actual numbers?
Forbes estimates Sox revenue at $266m. The MLB average is about $40 in revenue per ticket. Sox attendance floor over the last 20 years has been 1.6m (so far). That’s $64m. So about a quarter of total revenue.
impressive analysis, even if its off by a few million. But i imagine that the other streams of revenue could have ties to attendance too, such as ad revenues. I would assume ads would sell for less if they are put up in an empty stadium or played during broadcasts that no one is watching…
Also, sales from concessions at the stadium, souvenirs, etc…All tied to the attendance. TV deals are sorta tied to attendance (ratings). Last year I watched the least White Sox games that I can remembered. The product was just unwatchable.
Concessions and merch sales at the stadium are included in the per ticket revenue estimates.
Sponsorship and TV deals are usually for a set period of time so, barring work stoppage out clauses, attendance and ratings pain isn’t really felt until it’s time for a new deal.
On the other hand, the Sox have also pursued a strategy of deliberately courting demographics with more disposable income. So having a desirable market niche can offset decline in size.
Yup, the White Sox’ ZiPS are terrible.
ZIPs hates Yolmer, huh?
In that he’s considered nearly as valuable as the Abreu/Alonso tandem at 1B?
It hates Abreu too then.
Want to feel even worse?
ZiPS projects the entire Sox infield to be worth less than Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis
WTF are they projecting for Tatis?
1.5 WAR, which seems reasonable
IN 2019?
I’d say a bit bearish on Anderson and Eloy, bullish on Rodon (unless he can actually stay healthy and effective for 30+ starts, which is a big if), and holy crap the outfield is a mess (No Jay? not like that’d help much anyways).
A good podcast question relates to this. At SoxFest in January 2017, Rick Hahn said: “When the time comes, we will be prepared to be aggressive, and free agency is used usually as a means to round out a championship-caliber roster. We know that’s part of this. We are obviously not there at this time, but when the time comes, we are prepared to be aggressive.
Jerry has been on board in support of this from the start. He’s as competitive as anybody. He’s as impatient as anybody. He hopes ideally that we get this thing done as quickly as possible.
But I think the most beneficial part of his faith is that he’s not making us force the issue. He wants us to only make transactions if we feel it truly does serve the greater good for the long term, not just because any of us are impatient and we have to go do something.”
What is the “greater good for the long term?” Given the ZiPS projecttions for 2019 — the third season after Hahn’s comment — at what point will the Sox be “aggressive” beyond some self-imposed rules for the market that players won’t follow?
I am close to start hating Hahn
“Let the hate flow through you” – Abraham Lincoln
“Rick Hahn sucks” – George Washington Carver
“What We Talk About When We Talk About Fourth Place” – Raymond Carver
“You can call Hahn a liar.” – Ray Jay Johnson Jr.
Yeah, I remember that. I’m the one who asked him the question about spending for the 2019 offseason. At the time I thought, okay, good, let’s see it happen.
Narrator’s voice: “It did not happen.”
I mean I guess I get it, but “getting it” doesn’t really make me feel better. Be aggressive after you know your young draft picks and commodities from trades are going to give you a good core (unlike what they did the last time they had a good core *eyeroll*). Unfortunately, their draft picks may not be any more than at or below replacement level players, and they sold their generational hall of fame pitcher for an infielder with bad hands that can’t hit and a pitcher who immediately exploded. So…you’re kind of left with the entire organization hinging on Cease and Eloy to eventually turn into that 4-6 win player you need in order to win. They are in a rebuild that seems to be moving more backwards than forwards after a year of mediocrity and injuries, and so I’m not sure when the time to be aggressive will even be.
My only question is whether that’s April callup Eloy or July callup Eloy.
Callup Eloy, but sign an agreement to become the Red Sox triple-A affiliate. That way his ML service time clock won’t start and the Red Sox be sure to end up with another superstar former White Sox player.
Thanks, Jim, for writing that is so brilliant on a daily basis that it forces me to continue following this sorry-ass organization.
Being baseball’s Blackberry is the best simile I have read from you Jim.
I was reading Klaw’s article about Machado’s deal, and he believes the Padres jumped 1 year on their rebuilding timeframe. He predicts them to be a 90 wins team as soon as next year, and for various years.
Baseball’s Blackberry, on the other hand, pushed back the rebuild probably by a year, and winning 90 games in a season is not something one can envisioning happening any time soon.
*metaphor
I blame the auto correct
🙂 I just taught this lesson yesterday, so it was fresh in my mind.
FiveThirtyEight had a similar view on the Padres signing Machado.
After their championship win, I hope AJ allows Rick and Kenny a timeshare option on the GM of the Year trophy.
Them leaking that they are out on Bryce through their two lamest mouthpieces is a little too convenient based on how much they bitched about media coverage of the negotiations.
Just put me out of my misery now.
I think the most telling part of all of this was how reportedly the Padres FO were surprised that they got Machado. They knew the White Sox were in on him for months and were not expecting to have the top bid. So one of the two front offices was out of touch with reality here… i wonder which one.
Padres: Hey, let’s drive up the price on the White Sox!
White Sox: Ha ha, we won’t beat that price! Joke’s on you, losers!
Mood: What’s the opposite of Moneyball?
Charitycube, or Detachementfromthingsicosahedron is all I can come up with.
proudseatatthetable shockglasses
On a related note, could we please start selling “Kenny Williams Shock Glasses”?
#TWTW
[edited to say, from JR’s end, it sure as hell is Moneyball.]
moneywallet? edit: JR’s wallet, that is.
Renisdorf Ball. (aka: Jerry keeps all the money.)
Kick in the balls.
Arbyball
I think I’ll buy a Padres’ Machado jersey and wear it to Soxfest next year.
Hahn keeps saying even without Machado the Sox are better this year than last. I don’t see it.
Even if they are, WGAS? The metric is playoff appearances, not grinding out a few more wins than a 100 loss team.
The bar is pretty low. We lost 100 games last year. Hahn is just prattling PR phrases
If you lose 100 games it’s not hard to be better. It’s actually hard to lose 100 games.
They replaced Garcia and Davidson with Jay and Alonso which is a wash. Nova is probably better than Shields and Colome and Herrera are probably better than the end of the bullpen was. McCann is probably a downgrade from Narvaez. They still have a fifth starter hole, but otherwise, I don’t see any changes to the rest of the roster. Still, I can’t imagine them winning more than 70 games next season.
Hahn himself had a term for this insignificant, negligible growth. I believe it was
MIRED IN MEDIOCRITY.
I long for the days of mediocrity.
Great stuff Jim.
Andrew Toles just didn’t show up to Dodgers camp, they are saying it’s for a personal matter and he has the clubs support, but my first guess was he was pissed about not getting an opportunity in a couple years. The guy can hit and would start for the Sox. No idea what made him miss camp but go get him Rick. I need to see some improvement this off season somewhere on top of player development.
Like someone else said, last season was the least amount of Sox baseball I watched in ages. Easily the lowest engagement of this century, and this year I have no desire to go to the park right now at all.
I’d be cool with Toles. It’d be more interesting than watching Machado’s buddy slap the odd single, Leury injure himself, or Palka pretend to be an outfielder.
I like Toles and have said as much. He has no place on that team.
This whole mess has sapped every last ounce of optimism out of me. Initially I wanted Harper on the Southside, but quickly came around to Machado. Now that they swung and missed on Machado over such a small amount of money, and are, from all reports, pulling out of the Harper sweepstakes there is nothing to hope for. Rendon and Arenado will likely re-sign, and even if they don’t neither is 26. Harper and Machado were/are such commodities. Hopefully, things change, but the Sale trade return is currently underwhelming, our last 5 first round draft picks look like at best they will be league average. I have been supportive of Hahn for years, but I am near my breaking point as well. Every time a “prospect” gets hurt or stalls out, it seems every other club is finding a Guerrero, Tatis or the like.
I had the same thought about the Nationals signing Werth. Yeah, an overpay, but it signaled a major culture change for the franchise and, lack of postseason success notwithstanding, they’ve been one of the most successful teams in the league ever since. They also followed it up with even larger contracts.
White Sox: “We’re an afterthought in our city and league wide. Nobody on the street would recognize anyone on our team, possibly in our own city. Our best two hitters are a young RH hitting corner outfielder and an aging RH hitting 1B. We’re sitting on a pile of money from rebuilding (tanking) with no long term commitments. Our most consistent issue the last decade is abysmal obp. We’ve had out machines everywhere. We have no lefty mashing prospects.”
Agent:”What if I told you there was a 26 year old lefty MVP who is one of the 3-4 recognizable faces in the game. He has a Thome like obp around 400. He’s a free agent for his prime years so it won’t cost prospects, only money.”
White Sox:”Hard pass.”
Yeah, the fact they won’t even offer Harper bothers me just as much as how badly they bungled the Machado situation. This whole organization is a joke.
i mean i really wanted machado as he fit great however was always mixed on harper… while he is electric at times and his obp is rediculous his defense is suspect (probably a 1b/dh on the back end of his projected 10 year deal) and he has a lot of injury history… and this might sound kinda crazy but i didnt wanna see adolfo blocked cuz i really believe in his potential is main reason i wanted machado over harper, harpers upcoming deal has a massive risk of being a flop considering his athleticism is already slowing at 26, to me his main attraction was the marketability tbh
the massive pile of money statement is a bit of a reach… in aplril 2018 forbes reported our operating income to only be 30m depsite the low payroll most due to only 49m in gates receipts while the big players like cubs/yankees/red sox ect are typically in 200 range which they typically use to supliment their payroll
this is where i thought having a guy like harper would help… but in a perfect world if my fav team is gonna spend 30m a year on a player i would prefer it to be spent on a 3b/ss/ or ace starter, not a rf with suspect defence and in a spot where we have the most depth in the system, just my 2 cents
ive been saying this for 2 years now but my dream scenario has always been to sign both anthony rendon and 1 of the three aces (sale,bumgarner,cole) in 2020 offseason as a i feel you get best value for money in this scenario… hard to see rendon getting loose if they dont resign harper tho so we shall see
Harper has a QO, so he will technically cost a draft pick. Manny only cost money, and that is the big train we missed.
You were worried about them signing Harper because it could potentially block Adolfo?
Huh.
Adolfo forcing his way up while Harper was already on the team would be what they call one of those “good problems” to have.
The operating income does not include shared revenue streams from the MLB. That’s about $80-100M that Forbes doesn’t account for.
Makes me wonder if we had a backroom agreement with Phillies — don’t bid up Machado and we won’t bid up Harper.
Dammit, Jim- just when I was starting to mildly calm down, I read this article and get all worked up again.
How do we start a protest outside the stadium or send letters to an address like they do congressmen in order for us to push for Hahn and Williams to be fired and for JR to sell the team? I’m, like, serious. I want to flood some effing mailboxes at this point, even if just to be annoying.
So let’s see- 1. Harper/Machado both said from the start that a minimum of $300M was their asking price. 2. Sox meet with both Machado/Harper and are considered serious suitors for both. 3. Sox offer low-ball contract to Machado hoping nobody tops their offer. 4. Padres finally meet Machado’s asking price of $300, with just a straight $30M/year contract, no defered money, and one opt-out. 5. Sox refuse to match offer, with KW saying we can’t go to $300M. 6. Sox drop out of Harper sweepstakes without making an offer.
We have been royally played for fools by this management team. I don’t think they ever had any intention of seriously meeting the demands for either. Their only hope was that everyone else would also not meet their demands. The number of lies they have given us is only matched by their sheer incompetence. I don’t see how we ever add a premium free agent in the future with that outdated, cheap philosophy.
There has to be an orchestrated protest of this F/O by the fan base that will cause as much embarrassment as possible to these idiots. I will never believe Hahn again. He is a pawn to Jerry cheap-ass ways.
As every fan was on edge for months waiting to see if we could land these guys, perhaps no one was more nervous then Jerry Reinsdorf, he almost actually had to come up with the 250 mil
I’m pretty sure they knew someone would step up to the plate and beat them out, though. But there were still probably a few anxious moments in the F/O.
It would have been very interesting to see how they would have kept Machado from 550 plate appearances in 2026. They were probably starting to formulate a plan already.
Yeah they’re either lying or incompetent. I guess it’s possible they genuinely wanted Machado and they just thought 250 was the top of the market. Why they would think that’s the case when everyone knew he wanted 300 is beyond me. Either one isn’t a good look for the franchise and gives me no confidence this rebuild will become any more successful than where they were in 2016.
I would almost prefer it was incompetence but there is just no way they didnt know his desired salary and what the market was. Its purely them being cheap. And thats a disaster moving forward.
Anyone else nervous that Manny’s press conference will reveal something even more embarrassing than what they have done or said thus far? I’m picturing Manny saying “yeah at first it was just the sox offering a contract but they didn’t want to negotiate – just asked who else I’m friends with or related to. They are weird to deal with and I can’t see them ever getting someone to play there. And they didn’t bother to raise their offer until SD offered $300”. Or something like that.
He is probably too classy to say something like that, but it would be great if he did.
Yeah, my “quote” was in jest but I have a feeling there is even more embarrassing parts to the failed pursuit of Manny not yet out there. These guys have proved that when we feel we are at a low, there is still room to go lower.
Can his presser do any more damage then the KW and Hahn pressers have done the last couple days???? If so, thats must watch tv
There were reports last week that SD was offering at least 280. The FO are either lying or incompetent if they thought that 250 was going to be the best offer.
I think last week the Padres had a 240 guarantee and a 280 incentivized offer
Sox had a 250 guarantee worth upwards to 320 with incentives
Machados reps told each team, we want 300 guaranteed. Pads said ok, sox said we dont care about winning we care about defrauding our fan base, well whats left of it
I really am starting to feel bad for raising my son as a Sox fan. He is almost 12 and all he has known is horsesh*t baseball. I went through the same thing in the 80’s, so hopefully he will experience the same thing I felt in the 90’s, but I am starting to believe that will never happen.