Six teams have expressed “legitimate interest” in signing Jon Lester, a source tells WEEI.com’s Rob Bradford. The Red Sox are among the six interested parties, while the Mariners have not shown real interest to this point. As Bradford notes, Boston GM Ben Cherington told reporters, including Bradford, that while he did meet with Lester’s camp on Tuesday evening, no figures were exchanged. Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe tweets that Cherington spoke with one of Lester’s agents again today, making the second straight day the two sides have talked.
While Cherington said he doesn’t expect any signings from Boston by the end of the week, Gordon Edes of ESPNBoston.com tweets that Red Sox ownership has requested to meet with Lester’s representatives at ACES personally, possibly as soon as this week. Beyond that, Sean McAdam of CSNNE.com hears from a source that Boston is willing to make an exception to its well-known aversion to significant investments in pitchers on the wrong side of 30 in order to bring Lester back into the fold. Meanwhile, Bruce Levine of 670thescore.com tweets that Lester will meet with the Cubs in Chicago sometime next week.
Last night, Jason Mastrodonato of MassLive.com reported that Lester is willing to sign at any time, whether it be within a matter of days or months, if a team presents an offer to his liking. The Yankees, reportedly, will not pursue Lester or any of the top three starters on the market.
It’s going to be interesting to see if Lester can reach 150 MM..
on 7 years
My bet is Lester signs onto a team before Scherzer does.
there’s a lot of mileage on these tires.
I would say he shouldn’t get any more than 130 mill. I suppose we’ll see.
lets get him seattle. hanley, upton and cruz and ill be happy
So, the Seattle Mariners are the new Dodgers? Didn’t think I’d ever see that…..
Hanley, Upton, Cruz AND Lester? Do they really have the finances for even two of these guys, much less all four?
new tv contract money kicks in starting this year
Even with it, they won’t go that high. Mariners are around $91M right now in payroll, and the highest they’ve ever been was $117M. That leaves about $26M free. Lester alone will probably cost around $20M. I do agree that they could spend more than $117 with the new deal and all, but that doesn’t mean they should.
Lester and Upton with an extension (or another RH power bat), and then use the TV money to lock up someone like Seager and Paxton long term for cheaper (something like Matt Moore and Longoria). Or, take a risk and sign Tomas. Then, you keep your prospects.
The new tv revenue will be about $65M to $70M more. They can’t spend all of that, they have to pay payroll and other taxes. That stuff adds up quickly. They should be able to affort 2 big price tags. 4?
Upton costs prospects, too. Hanley? Injury issues and I wouldn’t spend less than 4 years on him with his injury history. Cruz? The FO passed on him last year because of his PEDs history. What changes their mind now?
The bat I would like is Tomas. Young and less $/yr. The arm? Never count the M’s out, they don’t leak. I prefer Lester then lesser year guys like Shields and Santana.
They get two legit pieces and they could add another 1M behinds in the seats this year in attendance.
Cruz will hit about 20 less home runs there.
NO to Hanley. I agree to sign Lester and then get a power OF bat though, preferably right-handed. J-Upton fits that. Might be nice if you can pry away someone like Heyward too. Upton would have to be locked up long term though first.
Boston, Chicago… and then who? Link says it isn’t Seattle (his hometown team).
I expect the Red Sox to go all in on Lester and Shields to try to shore up their rotation for the next few years.
Doubt we get both of them, ~45 million dollars is a lot of money for two pitchers, one of which is 33. I’d say the Red Sox’ll end up with one of the top 3, which hopefully is Lester or Scherzer.
The Sox have around 70-80 million in free payroll so it is feasible that they sign both Shields and Lester along with a guy like Panda/Headley and possibly a guy like Robertson and while they may be unlikely to do so it is possible. But if they only sign one of the Big Three I could see the Sox going after a mid tier pitcher such as McCarthy, Liriano, or Santana
Don’t they have around $50 million available?
So with $80 mil available that means they are looking at having a payroll close to $200m since they already have $115m tied up?
I wasn’t looking at the numbers but after going back and looking they have about 115 tied up and their record payroll is around 180 million so if they were to approach that they would have about 65 million to spend which is short of my original sum but the numbwr could be either over or under that amount depending on how much they feel comfortable spending
I hope your wrong about Shields. I’d prefer Scherzer but I know getting Lester and Scherzer is a pipedream.
Go get ’em Cubs!
i hope some team other than the Mets or Yankees offer him some ridiculous amount for like 10 years. Him and Scherzer
Like who
Not likely, but maybe the Cubs do it.
Theo isn’t stupid. He’s not going to inflate his offer when he knows full-well nobody else is even going to offer even close to that.
Washington (if they feel they can’t extend Zimmerman) Diamondbacks, Cubs, Baltimore, Houston, White Sox could all make a fairly high bid for him but I doubt anyone goes past 7 years for Lester/Scherzer
like any other team in the NL East and AL East. those guys are awesome now but i wouldn’t want to be on the back of any of those contracts for the last 3-4 years
Everyone knows you don’t go past 7 years for pitching. Atleast you shouldn’t. Especially after the TJ outbreak.
I don’t think that really applies to Lester. Most of the pitchers who get Tommy John are younger guys who don’t really know how to pitch and rely on velocity to blow hitters away. Lester is a finished pitcher with a long record of good health. If he were going to blow out his arm like that, it would have happened years ago. He’s going to be the type of pitcher who stays in the league until his stuff just isn’t good enough to get people out anymore, which could be anywhere from three to a dozen years from now. Two of his five “best comps” through age 30 are Jake Peavy and Andy Pettite. That’s exactly what Lester is.
Arroyo, Chris Young and Jaime Moyer all had TJ in the last 3 years and barely touched 85 MPH. Lester has a lot of mileage (Almost 1900 innings) and teams are aware of that.
Three examples doesn’t make his statement of “Most of the pitchers” any less true considering how *many* pitchers are going under the knife. He didn’t say all. He said most, and, honestly, I think he’s correct. I’d be surprised if more than 10% of TJ patients are over 30.
40% of all major league pitchers to have TJ in 2014, were 30 or older. About 7 of 18, give or take 1 or 2 on either side.
*Jamie, and I just wanted to see how the other half lives.
Those are guys who worked on the edge their entire career. They had to work just to throw 85. Lester throws 91-92 without any unusual effort and has other plus pitches, so his fastball looks better than that. He’s in a completely different class from those three pitchers.
Any pitcher can get hurt, but a guy like Jon Lester is about as good a risk as you can take. I’d rather give Jon Lester a six-year contract tomorrow than Yordano Ventura or Michael Wacha.
Any guesses on the 6 teams? Mine is Sox, Cubs, Houston, Rangers, Mariners, Blue Jays
Red Sox, White Sox, Cubs, Mariners, Houston, Blue Jays
Red Sox, Cubs, Angels, Yankees, Nationals, Brewers.
Yankees have already said they’re out. I think it’s Red Sox, Cubs, Angels, Mariners, White Sox and Rangers.
Why would the ChiSox want another lefty? Not like they have 3, young, controllable, good lefties + John Danks.
And never believe a team when they say they are out.
I don’t see how the Dodgers could be a viable candidate with Kershaw, Greinke and Ryu. Don’t see them paying that kind of money for a fourth starter.
They had 30M+ tied to the back of their rotation last year in Becket, Haren, Hernadez and Kohler.
Why wouldn’t the ChiSox want another good pitcher? The righty/lefty stuff is overrated. Lester is a quality pitcher and the White Sox have money and the willingness to spend it on talent. If you had five Jon Lesters, would you trade one to the Rangers for Colby Lewis just so you wouldn’t have so many lefties?
D-Backs, Redsox, Cubs, Yankees, Phillies, Dodgers.
Rangers will definitely (in my opinion) be one. JD has already said he’s focused on spending on the rotation.
Redsox, Cubs, Marlins, Mariners…. hmmm. Stuck at 4 unless the Yankees are quietly looking for another SP or trying to increase the price.
Red Sox, Yankees, Cubs, Dodgers, Phillies, Blue Jays-perhaps also SF, and Houston
I’m getting an uneasy feeling about Lester’s representatives meeting with Boston this much. Theo needs to be armed with a Brinks truck full of cash when Lester visits next week. Pay the man NOW Epstein!
I’m guessing that the Red Sox hierarchy understands the reality of their situation, and it’s not what their extended PR department – the NE sports media – is putting out. They are desperate and will overpay. This is a team that finished 25 games out after winning a WS, and their vaulted farm system products look pretty ordinary.
Mookie Betts is 21. Xander Bogaerts is 21. Both of those players don’t look ordinary. Are we really in the age of baseball where a prospect struggling at 21 makes him look ordinary thereafter? Bogaerts should still be expected to be a very good player going forward. The majority of players aren’t even in AAA at 21, much less already having World Series experience under their belts. Betts even excelled at 21 once he came up. Vazquez fit the bill as a defense-first receiver, and JBJ can’t hit yet. WMB was never a celebrated prospect. Swihart, Cecchini, Castillo, etc. are still likely to make an impact, and soon. Their pitching prospects are the one who suffered a fall from grace, but they could still rebound and be okay. The fanbase isn’t patient, though. They want to compete next year.
All we heard about was how great Middlebrooks was gonna be when he came up. Now that he’s a flop, you dismiss it that he was never celebrated. You also forgot to mention Bradley who hasn’t hit yet. Not a good track record.
I did not forget Bradley. Who do you think JBJ is? Players who perform well in small samples always get overhyped. Middlebrooks was on nobody’s radar before “bursting” onto the scene and was never hyped from what I remember, before debuting. I dismiss it as if he was never celebrated because prospect evaluators that I saw never celebrated him, though I now admit to possibly being wrong – Marc Hulet ranked him 2nd in the Boston system after 2011. Not a good track record? Vazquez, Swihart, Pedroia, Bogaerts, Cecchini, Bradley Jr., Betts, Ellsbury is a lot of recent good contributors coming up through the farm. It’s surely a better track record than most other teams. That top-four probably outproduces nearly every other recent homegrown foursome in WAR for their original franchise. Boston just won a WS a year ago, and has a bright future with controllable talent and massive payroll flexibility going forward. That’s a best case scenario for a franchise.
I did miss JBJ, but he may never hit, just saying. Actually I was just pulling your chain a little cause I don’t like the Sox. Actually I read somewhere recently that their farm system is ranked like 3 or 4 in MLB.
The word you’re looking for there is vaunted. And they only look bad to you. The rest of us know you don’t dismiss a guy because he has a bump in the road when he gets to the bigs. Bogaerts, Betts and Vazquez will be just fine. And as far as the pitchers are concerned there’s another crop with two of the top 100 in it that will be ready next year. Those were the real prospects. This years guys were all bottom of the rotqtion ceiling types.
This could turn out to be really fascinating, because I believe that no quality free agent to be has ever been traded midseason, and returned to his original team on a new contract. Should Lester do that, and particularly if he takes a contract with a slight (old) hometown discount-even $5 million on total contract value , I wonder if that’s not going to change the dynamic on midseason trades. Perhaps teams will really feel like someone’s a “rental” if all that they are getting is a couple of months in return for top prospects, for a guy who might have a gentleman’s agreement to return. Make for an interesting tampering investigation–especially when management works closely with the local media.
K-Rod left the Brewers mid-year with an ERA of 1.09, came back last offseason and was an Allstar.
K-Rod wasn’t a marquee free agent along the lines of Lester, Scherzer, even Headley, etc. Most times a team trades a player in his walk year it’s because they won’t re-sign them. It’s absurdly rare for the player to return to the team after getting traded away, mainly because usually the acquiring team will look to keep the player around, a la Price with Detroit, Headley and McCarthy with NYY, etc. Lester got traded to a city that had no chance to extend him. That’s why this is so rare.
K-Rod wasn’t closing anymore and was considered damaged goods. His time in Baltimore after the trade was undistinguished.
Won’t make any difference at all. The A’s didn’t care what Lester did after the season. They wanted two months of Jon Lester, period. If Lester then turned around and re-signed with the Sox, bully for Lester.
I don’t think there’s any agreement in place here, anyway. The Sox want Lester back and Lester wants to come back, but Ben Cherington is going to have to at least be in the ballpark with the other teams on his offer.
I swear, Lester better not sign back with the Sox. There should be a rule making sure teams don’t trade away their best (free agent to be) player mid-season for prospects or other players (like in this case) only to sign him back that winter. Doesn’t seem fair in my eyes.
What do you guys think?
I respectfully disagree with the sentiment. The MLBPA, first of all, would never agree to such a rule. Even if MLBPA did agree, there is never any guarantee the team would be able to re-sign the player. Boston took the risk of letting Lester go to another team and losing their exclusive negotiating rights, plus losing his production from their rotation, and lost Gomes, in exchange for Cespedes. Regardless of whether they pay top-dollar for Lester now, that doesn’t change. Also, top free agent-to-be is subjective. Should this rule not apply to Peavy or Andrew Miller because Lester was better? Miller could return to Boston and that would be not as bad because he’s not a superstar on Lester’s level? The teams acquiring these rentals understand they’re punting future value for present value. Mid-season trades are always calculated risks all around.
How is it fair to take a team out of the market for a player? There is no guarantee that Lester goes back, and Oalkand was paying for 2 months regardless because they cannot afford him.
I agree in a way, this has always had the feel of an under the table handshake of trading Lester so he has a shot at a ring while Boston reloaded knowing he’d come back after the season was over. Just tough to prove so I doubt a rule would ever be put in place to not allow it.
So what if there was a deal? Who did that hurt? Oakland got the players they wanted. Boston got the player they wanted in return. Lester got another shot at a ring. If he was going to sign with Boston for 2015 regardless, who, exactly, got hurt by this situation even if there was a deal?
Why should it be against the rules? The Red Sox traded a pending free agent who wasn’t going to make any difference in their season to a contender. In return, they got talent from that contender. It’s no different from any other team that’s made trades like that in the last 40 years.
Now Lester is a free agent, and there are 29 other teams besides the Red Sox that all have an equal chance to make him an offer for his services. If Boston signs him, so be it.
Lets hope Mr. Cherington makes a decision sooner rather than later. Because we all know what happens when we hesitate. Yes, the evil empire will swoon in.
Come on JD. Don’t let me down.
Its going to be either the Redsox or Cubs. With ‘executives’ predicting Lester to Boston, and the ‘constructive conversations’, and the fact that Lester took his house off the market, and the clear need for pitching with bags upon bags of money to spend, and the obvious centemental value, im thinking he goes back to Boston.
I hope the Yankees come out of nowhere like with Ellsbury last year and Damon a few years back. Lester is a horse and I think he will age gradually and be able to adapt to diminished stuff over the years. He would definitely solidify what could be an already strong rotation (as long as no serious injuries come about). A healthy Tanaka, Lester, Pineda, Sabathia, & McCarthy/Greene could be stellar to watch and would definitely offshoot our offensive woes.
Lester said he didn;t want to sign with thr Yankees. hes not going to go to the higgest bidder. He said hes only going to a team where he feels comfortable. How comfortable do you think he will be in NY?
Plus the Yankees said they have no interest in signing him long term
It’s between the Cubs and the Red Sox. All other teams are just rumors introduced by the agent to inflate his asking price.
The more I read into this, the more I think Lester is coming back to Boston. I could obliviously be wrong but if the Sox do offer him a fair value, I would be surprised if he doesn’t come back. He’s comfortable in Boston and knows the players/coaches very well. Boston also gives him a better opportunity to win sooner than later as the Cubs are still young and a few years from being a WS contender especially in that tough Central division.