Agent: Anibal Sanchez left money on the table

Remember a couple of years ago how everyone said Cliff Lee “left money on the table” to sign with the Phillies? I actually doubt he left money on the table -- no one knows for sure what the Yankees were offering him -- but I was pleased that the “money on the table” metaphor got goosed with all of that. I now like to picture all free agent negotiations taking place in a room with a big table and large stacks of cash.

Anyway, Lee must have let Anibal Sanchez borrow his table this past week:

Sanchez’s agent, Gene Mato, said that Sanchez left money on the table at the winter meetings, when an unnamed team offered him a contract, but that Sanchez didn’t want to make his decision on money, but rather comfortability.

Don’t say a thing about “comfortability.” I make up words all the time myself, and as long as everyone knows what they mean I think it’s good.

As for Sanchez leaving money on the table: I am doing the little Mr. Spock thing in which one eyebrow is raised. Partly out of skepticism, partly out of curiosity.

It would have to be a team which keeps its lips locked and about whom we tend not to hear rumors before something actually happens. The first two that spring to mind are the Blue Jays and the Yankees, and the Yankees aren’t in the market for an $80 million+ starting pitcher. Could be the Jays, I suppose.

Or it could be an agent trying to make it sound like his client didn’t just use another team -- the Cubs -- as a bogey in order to extract a few extra million from the team with whom his client wanted to sign all along. What say you, Mr. Mato?

The next morning, he called me early in the morning and said, ‘Listen, I want to be a Tiger.’ It was pretty clear from the beginning, to me, that Anibal really wanted to be a Tiger, so I did everything in my ability to make that happen.”

Fascinating.