Manny Machado hasn’t had a hit or driven in a run all winter, but he has attracted the most attention and the most comment of any free agent or any other player. By comparison, Bryce Harper has been invisible.
Early this month Machado was the central figure in the wildest rumor of the off-season. In widespread reports, he was said to be at Soldier Field in Chicago watching the N.F.L. playoff game between the Bears and the Eagles.
If that had been true, it might have been vaguely interesting. But there was more. Machado, the reports proclaimed, wasn’t simply watching the game. He was watching it with Jerry Reinsdorf, the White Sox chairman.
None of it, of course, was true, but it stirred the kind of talk that warms the Hot Stove League to a fever pitch.
On the heels of that rumor came another Machado matter, this one more rooted in reality but just as bizarre in its own right.
In what I believe was an unprecedented action, Machado’s agent, Dan Lozano, issued a statement harshly criticizing two well respected veteran baseball writers for their reporting of a White Sox offer to the All-Star shortstop.
Citing no sources, Buster Olney of ESPN and Bob Nightengale of USA Today both reported the White Sox offered Machado $175 million for seven years.
Olney tweeted:
The White Sox offer to Machado is for $175 million, over seven years. In some ways, their approach is like Boston’s w/ J.D. Martinez last winter – the Red Sox offered $100 million and waited for two months. If CWS offer emerges as best, a big ? is: Would Machado/NYY re-engage?
Nightengale also tweeted his reported offer:
The #Whitesox made their 7-year, $175 million offer about two weeks ago and haven’t felt the need to alter it, and bid against themselves . Just like Martinez last year with #Redsox as @Buster_ESPN points out, whose only other known offer was a one year proposal from #Dbacks
I am not criticizing Olney and Nightengale for tweeting and not writing their news; they did what reporters do today: report by tweets. As I have said more than once in this space, though, I am critical of the practice. What has become of writing? Reporters no longer write articles; they tweet.
The next generation of reporters won’t have to know how to write. Grunt-like phrases will suffice.
Zach Kram, who got his start on this site and now writes for TheRinger.com, is a terrific writer, maybe the best young baseball writer working today. Is his talent going to evaporate in a sea of #’s and @’s?
In his critical statement, Lozano did not use grunt-like phrases:
I have known Bob Nightengale and Buster Olney for many years and have always had a good professional relationship with both. But their recent reporting, like many other rumors in the past several months, have been inaccurate and reckless when it comes to Manny Machado. I don’t know if their sources are blatantly violating the Collective Bargaining Agreement by intentionally misleading them to try and affect negotiations through the public or are just flat out lying to them for other reasons. But the truth is that their reports on the details of the White Sox level of interest in Manny are completely wrong.
I am well aware that the entire baseball universe; fans, players, teams, and media members alike; are starved for information about this free agent market for all players, including Manny. But I am not going to continue to watch the press be manipulated into tampering with, not just with my client, but all of these players’ livelihoods as they have been doing this entire offseason. The absence of new information to report is no excuse to fabricate “news” or regurgitate falsehoods without even attempting to confirm their validity and it is a disservice to baseball fans everywhere when the media does just that.
Moving forward, I will continue to respect the CBA’s prohibition on negotiations through the media, and hope that others would do the same.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have to say I cannot vouch for the accuracy or completeness of the statement. Lozano did not respond to multiple telephone calls over four days, and his office refused to supply a copy of the statement. “Find it online,” one woman said.
Nightengale and Olney, on the other hand, both responded to my request for comment, both saying they stood by their stories.
I know from years and hundreds of free agents of experience the tricky nature of reporting offers to free agents. Reporters might get offers wrong, but they don’t deliberately report wrong offers. It might turn out that Machado will sign a more lucrative contract than the offer Olney and Nightengale reported, but offers change from day to day, week to week.
And both this year and last, clubs have taken so long to sign free agents there has been plenty of time for offers to change. Unless, of course, clubs are engaged in a game of collusion, but they would never do that, would they?
Olney and Nightengale both mentioned J.D. Martinez, who didn’t sign with Boston until Feb. 26. One of the reasons for his late signing was his agent, Scott Boras, who has a history of signing his clients late, using the delay strategically to induce teams to offer a better contract. In the Martinez instance, both sides used delay to get what they wanted.
In the Machado case, we won’t know until he signs who was right. Even if the two reporters turn out to have been wrong and he signs for significantly more money than they reported, it’s not the reporters who will have been wrong. If Lozano thinks they were acting against his interests in writing what they wrote, he would be sadly and stupidly mistaken. Olney and Nightengale are not out to undermine him by purposely understating the Machado offer.
If Lozano thinks the reporters or anyone else is violating the basic agreement or acting in any way to hurt him and his client, there is a simple way to counteract what he calls manipulation. All he has to do is disclose the amount of the White Sox offer and everyone will have it right.
But can he do that? Attachment 49 of the collective bargaining agreement bans agents, players and club executives from disclosing an offer or details of an offer or an unsigned contract before it is signed or approved? New in the current labor agreement, that’s what Lozano was referring to in his statement when he said he would “continue to respect the CBA’s prohibition on negotiations through the media.”
It seems to me, though, that he has already violated Attachment 49, if not in the letter of the law but the spirit. He hasn’t disclosed details of the White Sox offer, but he has clearly said it is for significantly more than 7 years and $175 million. That “clue” tells other clubs what they would have to offer to outbid the White Sox, and that’s what Attachment 49 is designed to prevent.