NEWSLETTER
With David Price off the board to the Red Sox, the next big domino in the free agent market to fall is likely to be Zack Greinke. Multiple reports indicate that a decision could come this week, and it’s down to the Dodgers and Giants for the ridiculously good 32-year-old righty.
Because each team is looking aggressively for pitching, there’s probably not much of a rooting interest here for Cubs fans. I suppose, given that the Giants are also looking at the outfield market – the Dodgers probably aren’t – you might say you’d rather see them blow their biggest expenditure in the pitching market, leaving them less likely to be aggressive in the outfield market. But would that really impact the Cubs all that much? And then you’d have the Dodgers very much needing pitching, and they could get even more aggressive on the next-tier guys that the Cubs are looking at. So, again: not really sure there’s a clear rooting interest here for us.
As for the eventual deal, which will be massive, it’s interesting to learn that it is going to be the product of a close relationship with the David Price negotiations. Bob Nightengale writes that the Red Sox went massive yesterday on Price because they’d been pushed by Greinke’s representatives for a final answer on a proposal involving that pitcher, so Boston, in turn, pushed Price for a decision (because he’d been considering an offer from the Cardinals). It sounds, then, like the Greinke camp wanted to rule out the Red Sox (i.e., make sure they weren’t going to make an insanely huge offer) before turning to the Giants and Dodgers and making a final decision this week.
[adinserter block=”1″]You can see, then, how interconnected these decisions often are when it comes to big league transactions. It’s not hard to imagine how the above-described decisions involving Price and Greinke were holding up moves around the league – if Greinke was waiting on the Red Sox, and if the Giants and Dodgers were waiting on Greinke, and if several free agents were waiting on the Giants and Dodgers, and if several possible trade partners were waiting on the Giants and Dodgers, too, and if several other teams were waiting on the results of those possible trades before committing to other free agents, and if those free agents were waiting on those teams … I could go on.
That’s why you often see the dam break when there’s a major signing like Price, and that’s what is expected this and next week.
