The established market value for a player of Cano’s skill and accomplishments is clearly above $20 million per year* in a long term deal*. Cano is an awesome ballplayer, one of the best in the game, and awesome ballplayers are paid big bucks.
I do not know why he would settle for anything less than one of the biggest contracts in the sport. $28 million is probably not going to happen, but that’s a pretty logical place for him to commence negotiations.
Detroit trades SP Doug Fister to the Nats for 2B Steve Lombardozi, LHP Ian Krol and minor leaguer Robbie Ray. As a Tigers fan, I’m not crazy about this deal, although it does free up more payroll.
I wonder if this is still true. Seems to me like the last few long term deals for great players in their 30s haven’t worked out so well for the team. It ties a HUGE amount of salary space up in a guy who, statistically, is probably past his prime and on the way to a decline in performance.
On the other hand, if they don’t sign Cano there’ll be a shortage of healthy superstars on the roster and the fans won’t go for that.
Meantime, it looks like the two sides are a paltry $90 million or so apart in negotiations.
And the Red Sox sign A.J. Pierzynski for 1 year. Not clear why they’re down on Salty, or how the well-known jerk AJP is an upgrade, but whatever. That leaves the door open for Vazquez and/or Swihart in a year or two, and puts Lavarnway in the trade-goods heap.
Joe Nathan to the Tigers in a two-year deal, reportedly.
Jon Heyman is reporting that the Yankees are close to a deal with Jacoby Ellsbury for 7 years and about $150 million.
My favorite Sox player. This really, really sucks. I don’t begrudge him his $150 million, and I don’t think the Red Sox should pay that, but I was convinced he was going back to the West Coast.
Recycle the Johnny Damon jokes. 
I’m OK with losing Ellsbury if it means getting Stanton, or even Kemp. He’s fragile, and at the age where he’s going to keep slowing down.
Salty’s going to the Marlins, to be close to home but obviously not to win.
Yeah, to be totally clear, I think this contract is insane. He’s 30, he’s already peaked, he has a knack for crashing into people and missing months, and he has no arm. I think the Yankees were stupid to pay this much money and I absolutely don’t think the Red Sox should have matched. Kudos to Scott Boras, yet again.
But I’ve followed this guy since he was drafted, and it hurts. Damon filled me with rage, this makes me sad. I never seriously thought Ellsbury would re-sign in Boston because I thought somebody else would overpay him and I’ve never been convinced he really liked it there anyway. But NYY? Didn’t see that one coming.
A player who hires Boras is out for the money, nothing else. Nothing wrong with that as long as he doesn’t give us that bullshit about playing closer to home, or for a winner, or some other pathetic lie (give Ells credit, he didn’t). So we knew long ago Ells was always going to the highest bidder, and that meant a big-market team that needs a CF. It was never going to be Seattle.
Worst case is we can now get Granderson for half the price and probably equal the output, right? Or Bradley can blossom as a hitter (who knows), or the money to get a corner OF with power and move Vic to CF is now available.
I have a hard time seeing the Ellsbury deal as solving a long-term need for N.Y. - it seems more in line with juicing up the fan base if they can’t sign Cano, and tweaking the Red Sox. As noted, it’s doubtful giving Ellsbury’s injury history if he’s going to stay reasonably healthy and productive over most of the length of the contract.
Hopefully Ellsbury will have a bit more class than Damon (who wasted no time once he was a Yankee in urging former Boston teammates to join him and sign up over there).
And possibly convincing Cano that he wouldn’t have to suffer through years of rebuilding if he stays?
Or that he should scale down his salary demands, since there’s less cash in the kitty now. 
It’s the Yankees. There is always cash in the kitty.
Though they tend to have their “this is as high as we are going to go” moments (see: Russell Martin; which turned out to be a very stupid move to let him go by NYY).
It’s not that there’s no cash available; it’s that they’ve said they were only going to spend a certain amount and they’re showing that there’s only so much available for him. They’re also in talks to bring back Kuroda for one more year, and the Yankees supposedly feel they still have enough cash to sign either Cano or Choo. Since Cano has been excellent, was by far their best player last year and figures to be so for a couple more years, I very much want them to bring him back. But then I don’t give a crap about the Steinbrenner family’s luxury tax issues.
The Blue Jays gave up on J.P. Arencibia. They apparently made an effort to sign and trade him but no MLB team was interested in giving them anything for him.
The Arencibia debacle - and that’s what it is - is about the worst handling of a positional requirement I can remember in recent baseball history. The Blue Jays did not just make Arencibia their starting catcher. They adopted Hernan Cortez’s policy of burning the ships to ensure they couldn’t go back, trading away every possible competitor for the catching job. They gave away Mike Napoli for essentially nothing (no, really) traded away their stud catching prospect in the Dickey deal, and went out of their way to ensure no other catcher was with the team longer than a few months, to ensure Arencibia HAD to be the starter. And they were surprised when 2013 was a disaster.
What I find bizarre about this is that it was kind of obvious Arencibia was not going to hit well. In 2012 he struck out 108 times and walked 18, a huge regression from 2011 and a ratio displayed by exactly no good hitters in the entire history of the major leagues. Nobody has ever been that bad at controlling the strike zone in a substantial amount of playing time in their mid-20s and gone on to be a good major league hitter. It cannot be done; it simply isn’t possible to be that bad at making contact and be successful in the major leagues. Nor is this mere statheadism speaking; I mean, just watching the guy, you can tell he is terribly overmatched by a competent MLB pitcher.
I said a year ago I’d trade him if anyone would take him because people still felt - wrongly, IMHO - that he had promise. Now the Jays have proven Branch Rickey right; it’s better to trade someone a year too early than a year too late.
I’m very uncomfortable with Jackie Bradley, Jr. being Plan A in CF. I’m not high on Granderson, either. His swing was great for Yankee Stadium, but he’d make a lot of outs in Fenway. I don’t know what it would take to get Stanton, but if it’s Bradley, Doubrant and some top prospect (Cecchini?), pull the trigger.
Beltran is in all the rumors stories, FWIW, which isn’t much. With him in RF and Victorino in CF for a year or two, I think that works. They can keep piecing LF together like last year.
I’d rather give up Middlebrooks than Cecchini, or maybe Marrero, and Miami could have Lavarnway too. But Bradley hasn’t shown he can handle AAA pitching yet, much less the big guys, so he’s expendable in a big deal. Buchholz might be better suited to a low-pressure market better, now that he’s shown how mentally fragile he is. So give Miami their pick of any or all of that package, if that will get it done for Stanton.
Kinda curious why the Jays waited to dump Arencibia until after the available FA catchers were already signed.