Here’s a link to a Sportsline story quoting Listin Diaro, the oldest daily newspaper of the Dominican Republic. The news: Alfonso Soriano has rejected a five-year, $70MM offer from the Nationals. Here’s the original article for those fluent in Spanish. It appears that the Listin Diaro article is quoting a Mexican radio station that interviewed assistant GM Jose Rijo.
So the initial bar on Soriano has been set: he’ll require more than $14MM annually. That’s not going to end well. In fact, I’m not sure he’ll be worth it in year 1.
Soriano’s rejection of the offer will at least stop the Nats from compounding their own error. Jim Bowden failed to trade Soriano at the deadline, but signing him for five years wouldn’t have righted that wrong.
UPDATE: So much for everything I just said in this post – Rijo and Nats president Stan Kasten just denied this report.
