MacPhail cites Tex offer as proof the Orioles will spend money

[RShack]

The day that we cry poor and don't extend our own players is the day that I cry fowl.

[Dipper9]

McPhail is off base, and the fans are correct in their thinking. For example, If my wife thinks I'm cheap and I want to prove her wrong would I offer 500,000 dollars on a house that is clearly worth 1 million and turn around and say "see I'm not cheap I offered 500K, they just never accepted my offer". I knowingly underbid the worth of the house to prove a point. This whole we tried attitude for the franchise make me sick.

Apples and oranges my friend.

What if that same house was a forclosure, so there was no SALE price. It was an open auction. You go in and immediately offer $500,000. The answer then is YES, you made a GOOD bid on the house, but some jackhole came in and overpaid by double because he is a millionaire, and you are just a hard working husband.

[Lucky Jim]

McPhail is off base, and the fans are correct in their thinking. For example, If my wife thinks I'm cheap and I want to prove her wrong would I offer 500,000 dollars on a house that is clearly worth 1 million and turn around and say "see I'm not cheap I offered 500K, they just never accepted my offer". I knowingly underbid the worth of the house to prove a point. This whole we tried attitude for the franchise make me sick.

From the logical framework of this post, I'm not sure you're qualified to be the final arbiter of who's off-base and who's correct.

The whole point is that there is no "clear worth" in the FA market. There's a floor, to be sure, but there's no fixed value.

If, however, you think the house is worth somewhere between $800,000 and $1m and you know it's an active market, and you bid $850,000 and say get back to me if you get another offer...

...you have every right to hold it up as an example of willingness to spend. If someone's willing to pay the full Monty, well, that's tough luck. Especially if the other side never gets back to you.

You can identify the value of a house, identify a desire for the house, and get in the bidding without necessarily being willing to max out its purchase price.

[TonySoprano]

Apples and oranges my friend.

What if that same house was a forclosure, so there was no SALE price. It was an open auction. You go in and immediately offer $500,000. The answer then is YES, you made a GOOD bid on the house, but some jackhole came in and overpaid by double because he is a millionaire, and you are just a hard working husband.

You offer $500,000 at a time when three other offers are on the table are better. Then you sit on the offer and tell the wife, "gee, Hon, we tried. What a shame they didn't take our offer. Go figure."

[Hank Scorpio]

But its an offer that had no chance of being accepted so what good is it?

It's a starting point to gauge his interest.

We have no idea what actually happened between the two, but MacPhail said that he made an offer and was told directly by Boras that there wasn't much reciprocal interest.

So what's he supposed to do? Offer $180MM to appease us?

That's just silly.

[SilentJames]

But its an offer that had no chance of being accepted so what good is it?

But that is not AM's fault. The problem is that no matter what the Orioles threw out there the Yankees would have been able to top it.

The o's contract would have made Tex a tope-sever earner in the league, the Yankees made him top-four. The Orioles would have had to have given Tex A-rod type money to get him here.

[Aloe]

From Melewski's blog:

Seems to me Andy still doesn't quite get it. He offered the lowest amount for Tex of the teams that were pursuing him and yet still thinks that's an acceptable offer. Hopefully he doesn't make that same mistake in judgement when pursuing lesser names.

Plus he didn't use the money he claims he offered to Tex to sign anyone else who was a free agent.

[Stotle]

Plus he didn't use the money he claims he offered to Tex to sign anyone else who was a free agent.

Because these are rollover dollars -- you don't lose them if they aren't spent.

[Tony-OH]

It's a little hard to assess the Tex negotiations without knowing more than we know. I guess we know the O's made an opening offer of 7/$140 mm. To me, that was a very legitimate starting point, and even if someone else made a higher opening offer, I wouldn't say the O's had a bad opener or that they weren't ready to spend some serious money.

The real issue is what happened after that. It's unclear whether Boras ever countered the O's offer, or whether Tex really had any serious interest in going to the O's. Would the O's have upped their offer? Should they have done so unilaterally after reading that other teams had bested their initial offer, or was it appropriate for them to wait for Boras to call and tell them what's what? Did Boras do that? What response did they give? I think you'd need to know the answer to all these questions to know if the O's handled this well.

In the end, 8/$180 mm was too much for the O's to pay Tex. I don't think he would have chosen Baltimore over NY even if we'd matched the offer, and it's not clear whether we were given that opportunity.

Ah, the voice of reason in a forest of screamers...

[Mooreisbetter27]

Because these are rollover dollars -- you don't lose them if they aren't spent.

[Hank Scorpio]

I can see us having this argument ten years from now.

[Frobby]

You offer $500,000 at a time when three other offers are on the table are better. Then you sit on the offer and tell the wife, "gee, Hon, we tried. What a shame they didn't take our offer. Go figure."

As I said in my first post in this thread, we don't really have the details of what occurred between when the O's made their initial offer and the time the Yanks made their winning bid.

Let's say you bid $500,000 for the house, knowing that you're willing to go to $575,000 if youo have to. You hear some rumors that three other bidders have bid $525,000. Now you call the agent and say, I hear you have some better offers, just want to let you know I'm prepared to bid higher. The agent says, "fine, I'll let you know after we've heard from everyone." Now you hear that someone has come in with a $600,000 offer. Well, now there's no longer a point in upping your bid, since you aren't willing to pay the $600 k.

I'm not saying this is the way it happened. It might have, it might not. But we really don't know.

[TonySoprano]

As I said in my first post in this thread, we don't really have the details of what occurred between when the O's made their initial offer and the time the Yanks made their winning bid.

Let's say you bid $500,000 for the house, knowing that you're willing to go to $575,000 if youo have to. You hear some rumors that three other bidders have bid $525,000. Now you call the agent and say, I hear you have some better offers, just want to let you know I'm prepared to bid higher. The agent says, "fine, I'll let you know after we've heard from everyone." Now you hear that someone has come in with a $600,000 offer. Well, now there's no longer a point in upping your bid, since you aren't willing to pay the $600 k.

I'm not saying this is the way it happened. It might have, it might not. But we really don't know.

You know Andy wasn't the first bidder. Other offers were known, so your example doesn't quite work. In fact, the reason the Rangers traded him was because their offer of $144 million, which was higher than Andy's opening salvo, (much higher, factoring in no state income tax in Texas) was rejected. We were hoping on a home team discount which is not the way Boras does business.

I'm not even getting into a discussion of whether we drew our line in the sand at the right place or not, or whether it would have made a difference.

What bothers me, I'm sorry, but I find it disingenuous to say we're really willing to spend, when the known market was much higher than our offer which we categorized as "too much for one player." It's easy to throw numbers out there which you know are DOA, but it's insincere in saying that we really tried.

[RShack]

I'm not saying this is the way it happened. It might have, it might not. But we really don't know.

I don't know why it's hard for folks to grok this. Most of the uproar is based on people assuming that they know things that they don't. It's based on people making up stories about what "really" happened. We weren't there, we don't know. It comes down to whether (a) you believe AM was reasonable and sincere and truthful in what he's said about it, vs. (b) you believe he was putting on some phony facade to deceive Oriole fans or was a dope who knows nothing about negotiating with agents. Why anybody would believe the latter is beyond me, they've got nothing to base it on except the snakes in their head, but some people seem to believe it anyway.

[mweb]

I haven't read the whole thread, who made offers before the O's and for how much? I don't recall. This is pertinent to determining if it was a token offer or not imo.