NEWSLETTER
See? Ridiculous, immediate, and completely contradictory things are reported involving teams other than the Cubs.
Not a few hours after reports circulated that Robinson Cano and agent Jay-Z had blown things with the Seattle Mariners in a visit last night, Enrique Rojas is reporting that the two sides have actually agreed to a monster 10-year, $240 million contract. Multiple other reports say a deal is close.
I dug into the implications of such a large contract with the Mariners earlier this morning, but the short version is: the Mariners will regret the deal in terms of baseball value, but they must be hoping it will pay off-the-field dividends. Further, it’s the kind of signing you don’t make unless you’re planning to add additional significant pieces, because, alone, Cano does not make the Mariners a competitive team.
You can look now for the Mariners to even more aggressively pursue David Price in trade, or maybe even someone like Jeff Samardzija. They could instead look to add a free agent arm – or Masahiro Tanaka, assuming he’s posted – and/or a free agent bat in the outfield. If the Mariners get in heavily on Tanaka, this was a double-whammy, because we now know that the Yankees will have plenty of money for him if they want.
Given that everyone in baseball seemed to be assuming that Cano would eventually return to the Yankees, this signing has the potential to complete disrupt the rest of the market (including by way of the Yankees’ subsequent moves). The impact might take several days to sort out. I guess next week’s Winter Meetings are well-timed after all.
