Ellsbury Contract Is A Guidepost For Shin-Soo Choo

A club in on Shin-Soo Choo tells Joel Sherman of the New York Post the seven-year, $153MM contract Jacoby Ellsbury agreed to with the Yankees is being used as the guidepost in their negotiations (Twitter link). The club expects the final number to be somewhere between Ellsbury's deal and Jayson Werth's seven-year, $126MM pact with the Nationals. All three players are represented by Scott Boras, per MLBTR's Agency Database.

Several teams have been linked to Choo with varying degress of interest including the Rangers, Mariners, Tigers, Reds, Giants, Astros, and Yankees (before coming to terms with Ellsbury and Carlos Beltran). MLBTR's Tim Dierkes predicted a six-year, $100MM contract for Choo, but the frenzied free agent spending spree this offseason makes that estimate seem quite low. Choo is the highest ranked free agent remaining on MLBTR's 2014 Top 50 Free Agents list.