NEWSLETTER
There’s a great offseason read from Jerry Crasnick as he did his thing at the GM Meetings this week.
Crasnick spoke with 21 GMs, assistant GMs, player personnel people and scouts to poll them on seven pressing offseason questions. It’s fun to see what folks in the industry think when they’re free to speak freely with the cloak of anonymity.
The Cubs don’t feature prominently in many of the answers, though one GM pegged the Cubs as the team that will sign Robinson Cano (one other said the Dodgers, and the rest said the Yankees). That GM, you should know, said he didn’t have any inside information and was just guessing. Although I don’t see the Cubs laying out more than $200 million for Cano, it is an interesting reminder of how limited the market for Cano’s services could be. We know the Yankees are in, but the Dodgers might actually be out, what with having signed Alexander Guerrero already. The polled executives believe Cano lands a seven or eight-year deal in the $160 to $230 million range. Hey, at the extreme low end of that – eight years and $160 million – I think it might not be an utterly insane deal. Too bad he’ll do better.
Unlike Cano, the responses were very spread out on Masahiro Tanaka. The Cubs got one vote, as did the Giants, Mariners, and Blue Jays. The Yankees got six votes, and the Dodgers led the pack with nine. Two executives didn’t guess. I guess I’m surprised that the Yankees didn’t lap the pack, what with the posting fee not counting as salary for luxury tax purposes. But, hey, never bet against L.A. and SIGN ALL THE PLAYERS. Just about all of the polled execs believes that Tanaka’s contract will exceed the $60 million Yu Darvish got (and I’d assume that means they think the posting fee will be higher, too).
Give Crasnick’s piece a read for the full details on those two questions, as well as the other five. Teaser: the Cubs were not among the teams mentioned in a possible David Price trade. The Astros did get a vote, which probably looks to outsiders as crazy as the Cubs getting a vote on Cano.
