He’s among the best free agents left on the market – well, the best, actually – so I get why there is a lot of national attention on him at the moment. And, obviously, there’s a lot of local attention around these parts, too!
But I’m just saying that it FEELS LIKE these things coming out tonight about Dansby Swanson are a “last call for high bids” situation:
That one from Heyman, in particular, kinda has the feel of an agent saying, “Hey, if you get to $200 million, he’ll say yes.” That makes you think Swanson has an “acceptable” offer in hand already, but maybe not with a team he’d prefer to go to (insert your possibly-accurate joke about the Cubs here). I’m not sure Swanson will ultimately get $200 million, but would anything surprise you in this market? And as Michael discussed earlier, a “$200 million” contract isn’t quite what we have conceived of it previously.
And as for the Rosenthal report, maybe the Dodgers are being floated specifically because Swanson would like to go there? Great team, Freddie Freeman is there, etc. But maybe the offer isn’t quite acceptable yet? Basically, Rosenthal indicates that the Dodgers want Swanson, but only at “their price.”
I presume that the same thing is happening with the Braves, given the hometown relationship. Not sure exactly what’s up with the Red Sox and Twins, though a part of me irrationally hopes that the Twins signing Joey Gallo today is a small part of their pivot away from spending at shortstop.
I swear, though, if this thing winds up that Swanson takes a lower offer from a non-Cubs team, I will be … sad. But I’ll also say that it reinforces something we’ve talked about before: although money is the ultimate decider for players, at the margins, competitiveness can be the difference between having to merely “overpay” and “massively overpay.”