I was talking about the $300M offer. I should have said that and not "an offer."
My point has been maybe the offered him $295M, or never formally made an offer, but when the floated $300M verbally, and the comeback was $420M, they didn't bother to make an actual offer. Both would make what Betts said the truth, but also mean the Sox were serious about giving him near $300M or actually $300M.
This scenario is very plausible, but it does raise the question on why someone from the Sox has never said, "We made a verbal offer of ____, and their request for much more, made us not formally make the offer." How would that hurt their image? This where I tend to agree with you guys that something seems fishy, and with the Sox fishy history, it makes it more believable.
I also can't believe the last offer- formal or not- was $200M from the previous year, before his MVP season. That makes no sense, either, but so did the whole Lester mess.