UPDATE II: Never mind. Seems the Nats are out.
UPDATE: All kinds of mixed news on this Cliff Lee/Nats stuff. Mark Feinsand of the Daily News reports that, according to a Major League source, the Nationals are going to offer Lee a seven year deal and that the Yankees will not go seven. Adam Kilgore of the Washington Post, however, just followed that up by saying that, while negotiation might happen and the Nats could make a big offer, “a seven year offer won’t be made.”
Either way, I think it’s important to remember one thing here: even if the Nats did go seven years, there’s nothing to suggest so far that it would be bigger on a dollars-per-year basis as a six-year deal the Yankees could offer. The upshot: this is all fun, but let’s not get too crazy until we hear numbers attached to this stuff.
10:02 A.M.: Buster Olney just tweeted that there is “growing speculation among rival agents and executives that Nats are going to throw a HUGE number at Cliff Lee.”
Like I said earlier this morning, I can’t really see Lee wanting to go to Washington. But of course, I couldn’t see Werth wanting to go to Washington either. And I couldn’t see Washington going all Dr. Evil and offering billions of dollars to free agents for some damn reason either.