Everyone is writing about Manny today. I mean, EVERYONE is writing about Manny. Here are a couple of the lowlights and highlights:
Mike Celizik at NBC Sports. Warning: this may cost you brain cells:
Manny should have taken the $25 million. And then he should have kissed everybody in the Dodgers’ front office for being willing to pay him so much money for one year of play.
As soon as the ink is dry on his new contract, he should give agent Scott Boras his commission and then tell him to go screw up somebody else’s career. At the press conference to talk about the signing, he should swallow his pride (It’ll take a lot of swallows to get that much ego down, but if he sticks to it, he’ll get it down.) and apologize to Los Angeles, to Boston and to baseball for being such a jerk.
This guy set me up so well for a funny comment, but he is so far off base, I dont even know how to respond.
Ramirez and Boras didn't respond to the Dodgers' two-year, $45 million contract offer earlier in free agency and declined an offer of salary arbitration. Various reports have indicated that Ramirez is looking for at least a four-year deal for approximately $25 million per season. Despite the slumping economy, Boras still expects that Ramirez, by far the best free agent without a job, can still land a multi-year deal.
“Manny is doing fine,” Boras told Yahoo! Sports.com's Tim Brown Tuesday night. Asked if he still believed Ramirez would have a contract by the start of spring training, Boras said, “I don’t really think about a timetable. Anything can be done any day. You just don’t know.”
Then, apparently referring to the Dodgers' 48-hour deadline to accept or reject the one-year offer, Boras said, “What I do know, you better watch out when you’re playing chicken,” Boras reportedly rejected the offer within minutes.
According to the MLB.com report, Boras noted that free agents CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira received lucrative contracts for seven and eight years, respectively. He said that supports Ramirez's desire for a longer deal from the Dodgers. Of course, Ramirez comes with baggage -- he turns 37 in May, and his tumultuous exit from Boston may be a concern to some potential suitors.
"We still have interest in signing Manny," Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti told ESPN.com yesterday after the one-year offer was rejected. "Right now we don't have a deadline, but that doesn't mean we're not going to have a deadline. These situations can change in an instant, and anybody can change them in an instant."
The direction this is going in, it just wont end well for Colletti. You dont want to be the guy playing chicken against Scott Boras. Not when you are the guy who was taken to the cleaners by the likes of Juan Pierre.
Eric Dorval, as usual, has a funny take at the Examiner:
After this latest offer was declined, Dodgers GM Ned Colletti told ESPN.com, “We still have interest in signing Manny.” Wow, Ned, you truly are a shrewd negotiator. Mr. Colletti probably plays poker with his cards face up. He has now made two contact offers while no one else has shown anything more than the slightest interest in actually signing Manny. On the flip side, agent Scott Boras is putting on a seminar on how to manipulate management and artificially inflate your clients worth. This is Scott Boras’s real genius: getting teams to bid against themselves. If you want to know why baseball salaries are so high, look no further than Scott Boras and Ned Colletti. As I told Eric in an email exchange, I love that line about how Colletti is playing poker with his cards facing up. Anyone remember that scene in Dazed and Confused when the nerdy guy has a few beers and decides to take on the tough guy, and then get beaten up really badly at the party? No? Anyone? Well Colletti is that guy.
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