Update: HOLLIDAY A CARD 7yr/120 million, p178

[cards2468]

Interesting Gammons tweet:

Boston ecstatic with Lackey. Before he stepped foward, Sox offered 4x$15M to Bay and 5x$16.5 to Holliday.

if our offer is really at 5 years, I'd imagine the Red Sox offer was better... however they're now out of the running, Yankees are done(I think), I don't think there was any substance to the O's interest, and the Mets can't afford him. Boras is losing lots of options

[Eephus Speed]

any chance with Holliday signed for left that we could sign Beltre for 3rd and still have enough money left to get a 5th starter and a bullpen arm?

With ~$30M to spend, we probably could. If we went really cheap on the pitchers or did some significant backloading.

But it'd be almost impossible to keep payroll at $100M next year and beyond.

[Jocephus]

According to Peter Gammons, now of MLB.com, the Red Sox offered a five-year, $16.5 million deal to Matt Holliday before settling on John Lackey.
The offer is strikingly similar to the rumored proposals we've heard out of St. Louis this week. It's quickly becoming apparent that agent Scott Boras is not going to land Mark Teixeira-like money for his client, or anything close. The 29-year-old outfielder finished with a .313/.394/.515 batting line in 2009 with 24 home runs and 104 RBI but hasn't found much of a market.
Source: Peter Gammons on Twitter
Related: Red Sox

[ghostrunner]

Wonder if this produces a wave of second tier teams who didn't think they had a shot before. It's still a hefty chunk of change though.

[TheoSqua]

Wonder if this produces a wave of second tier teams who didn't think they had a shot before. It's still a hefty chunk of change though.

The average payroll in baseball right now is $91m, so that'd make a 17m annual salary over 18% of the average team's salary. Not many teams with that much money to spend right now.

[ghostrunner]

Wonder if this produces a wave of second tier teams who didn't think they had a shot before. It's still a hefty chunk of change though.

The average payroll in baseball right now is $91m, so that'd make a 17m annual salary over 18% of the average team's salary. Not many teams with that much money to spend right now.

I was thinking they could go lower and offer the years originally reported in the Cardinals offer.

[Jocephus]

Is a Boras bluff in the Cards?

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=A ... &type=lgns

[Eephus Speed]

Jeff Pisson is probably overestimating the difficulty of building a winner when 2 players make up 40% of payroll. I think he's also overestimating our need to sign Holliday so as to protect Pujols.

[Jocephus]

from mlbtraderumors, from olneys insider blog

The Orioles checked out of the Matt Holliday derby when they learned that he's asking for considerably more than $75MM.

[cardsfansince82]

from mlbtraderumors, from olneys insider blog

The Orioles checked out of the Matt Holliday derby when they learned that he's asking for considerably more than $75MM.

I could have told them that months ago.