Bellhorn04

There’s been ample speculation about the eventual price tag of a Yoshinobu Yamamoto contract, but until early this week, the right-hander hadn’t discussed specific years and dollars with clubs, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reports. Teams eyeing the NPB ace’s services were asked to submit a “preliminary” bid early in the process to gauge the seriousness of their interest, per Passan, but a follow-up round of more concrete bidding hadn’t taken place prior to this week. Yamamoto has met with several teams recently, presumably to familiarize himself with each organization and the systems and personnel in place at each potential landing spot. Entering the week, no teams had made a formal offer of $300MM or more, despite speculation to the contrary; none, in fact, had submitted a formal offer even beyond that preliminary bid. Passan wrote that some clubs have tried to broach the subject of years and dollars, but Yamamoto’s camp preferred to hold off until this week. The Yankees, Mets, Dodgers, Giants, Red Sox, Phillies and perhaps the Blue Jays among the teams reported to have met with Yamamoto over the past 14 days. Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic characterized both the Phillies and Blue Jays as teams more on the periphery of the bidding as of this morning, however (video link). It takes only one aggressive bid to change that perception, of course, but it’s notable that they’re being framed in that manner at present.

Monty and Burnes with an extension. The Dodgers just did it with Glasnow, so now we know the trade-contingent-on-extension is still a thing.

There really is no magic blueprint. Look at the Rangers. What was their plan? "OK, we'll spend $500 mill on 2 star position players this offseason. We'll still really suck in 2022. But then we'll go apeshit on starting pitching for 2023, the biggest names of which will get injured and be virtually useless. This should clearly result in our first World Series title."

"Get the damn pitchers and the rest is cake", is my thinking...

Call it lucky, but Whitlock was huge that year too.

It would be dorky indeed.

Which was very predictable, of course...but was it factored into the Sox strategy for this offseason?

If the Red Sox don't sign Moto, the ABY principle is in effect for me.

Yep, it's a clear case of Occam's Syringe, I mean Razor, man.

And you're being pretty gentle about it, Hugh.

If what he says is right, I will agree with it.

Pretty hard to argue, Ken is saying the same things many of has have said.

And we all know we may reach a point that we will cry tears of joy for Monty and Imagana.

All we want Henry to do is put up the money. That's how he shows he cares.

Hopefully not the name of a Robert DeNiro movie.

Why are we posting in two threads here? They're both the freakin' same. And no mods to fix anything. Too funny.

It's also one of the biggest decisions of his life. He may want to ruminate on it a bit. I don't think he will drag it out unnecessarily. He and his team probably don't want to be seen as holding up the whole offseason either. I think he will decide before Christmas. We're down to the last few days of torture.

If I'm comparing the Sox to other teams right now the big negative is the *apparent* dysfunction in the front office. I think the Sox have a bad rep in this area right now, and all the people who declined to interview for CBO are more evidence of it.

If you go on the recent past, the Yanks, unfortunately, profile as perpetual winners. They haven't had a losing season since 1992.

Please, don't get him started on Pedroia.

There are no guarantees that any franchise will be successful for the next decade. But having an owner with a ton of money who wants badly to win surely helps the profile a bit.

O'Neill has Nuclear Arms.

Yes, you delicately omitted Bauer and Clevinger.

They also got Jerry Sands, who was part of the trade for Brock Holt. The best player they got was Benny Franklin, of course.

I think the Mets upgraded their farm in those trades. Plus Cohen is obviously willing to spend whatever it takes.