« Red Sox Make Lester Extension Official | Home | Lugo To Have Surgery On Tuesday »
On Day Sox Make Lester Extension Official, They Postpone Negotiations On Bay’s Extension
By Administrator | March 15, 2009
On the same day the Red Sox announced a five-year contract extension for southpaw Jon Lester, the ballclub also announced that recent “substantive” negotiations on a contract extension for left fielder Jason Bay have been put on hold. Sox General Manager Theo Epstein attributed the delay in further negotiations to the “unusual marketplace” that pervades the baseball world.
How ironic it seems that the marketplace is all right to enter into a five-year (or six-year) extension with Lester but not with Bay. What must Bay and his agent be thinking (especially considering the TIMING of the announcement)?
Epstein said: “There’s desire to get something done on both sides, there’s just a mutual recognition right now that it’s going to be next to impossible to get something done. It really boils down to the nature of the market right now, more than anything else”.
Bay is entering the final year of a four-year, $18.25 million contract he signed with the Pirates prior to the 2006 season… he will earn $7.5 million in the upcoming season. For his part, he says: “There is nothing I can do about the market or that I’m a free-agent. If something comes up that makes sense, we’ll consider it. I felt like when I came over here it was like I was a free-agent. If you could pick a place, (Boston) would be the top of your list”.
Because both Adam Dunn and Pat Burrell, veteran outfielders seemingly in the prime of their careers, have signed two-year free agent deals that reduced their salaries, Epstein says that the team and the player feel the need to wait: “The market has changed so much from two years ago to this winter, from a year ago to now. Who knows where (the market is) going to be a year from now? So that unpredictability, I think, has created a landscape that’s been difficult for us to navigate in terms of getting an extension done a year early. Both sides wanted it, so we tried, but both sides recognize that it’s just too difficult to get done right now”.
He continued: “We had talks (earlier in the offseason), but they weren’t really substantive. Recently, we’ve had more substantive talks. It’s become clear that because of the unusual marketplace, we’re not going to get anything done during spring training. We’re going to sort of halt talks for now, just table them. But both sides have committed to maintaining good dialouge throughout the course of the season”.
How convenient…
Topics: Sox Front Office, Sox Players |
