Publicly, the Manny Machado market has been eerily quiet of late. Machado's agent, Dan Lozano, tends to do business differently than Bryce Harper's agent, Scott Boras. Fewer leaks, less of the game-within-a-game negotiating.
We know the main three teams after Machado are the Phillies, White Sox and Padres. And on Sunday night, after hours upon hours of tweets from two national reporters involving Harper but really no new information, two actual reports surfaced about San Diego's offer to Machado.
Responding to a Jon Heyman tweet, Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune wrote that his understanding was the Padres' offer to Machado exceeds $250 million.
Shortly thereafter, USA Today's Bob Nightengale reported the offer is for eight years and worth between $240-280 million.
The offer is expected to include deferrals and a huge signing bonus to somewhat circumvent California's high tax rate.
It makes sense that the Padres' offer would hit that high a number because they don't have a ton to offer outside of money. That is not a team in win-now mode, and even with Machado the Padres would be far behind the Dodgers and Rockies in their own division.
An eight-year, $280 million contract would be a win for Lozano and Machado. At $35 million per year, it would be the highest annual average value ever awarded to a position player. The current record belongs to Miguel Cabrera at $31 million. So even if Machado wouldn't be exceeding that magic number of $300 million, he and his reps would still be able to say they signed a record-breaking deal.
MLB
The widespread expectation is that Machado will sign with the highest bidder. That could end up being the Phillies, who likely knew before Sunday that an offer in the $250-280 million range existed for Machado.
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