Part of the tradition of the Seattle sports winter is a story that the Mariners are in pursuit of one of the premier free agent hitters in baseball. Following failed recruitments in previous years of Prince Fielder and Josh Hamilton, the Mariners, true to form and according to ESPNNewYork.com Tuesday, are said to be a major player for All-Star second baseman Robinson Cano of the Yankees.
Cano, 31, is the best player on the market who last season hit .314 and had 27 homers and 107 RBI. Sources told the website Seattle may be willing to do a deal worth as much as $200 million over eight seasons. The Yankees are said to be reluctant to meet either demand for the five-time All-Star.
Said one industry source in the story: “It doesn’t look too good right now” for the Yanks to retain him.
Mariners general manager Jack Zduriencik would not say whether he has met with Cano.
“We’ve talked to everybody,” Zduriencik told ESPNNewYork’s Andrew Marchand. “There’s not a free agent we haven’t talked to. We’ve cast a wide net.”
One of the sources said the Mariners were “desperate for hitting and desperate to put people in the ballpark.”
Nothing is new about the Mariners’ desperation at this time of year, but it hasn’t made a difference with veteran free agents who, when the money is nearly equal, choose to play with teams invested in winning. The Texas Rangers, who traded second baseman Ian Kinsler to Detroit for Fielder last month, were also mentioned in the hunt for Cano.
Cano was said in October to have demanded a $300 million, 10-year deal, which he denied. The Yankees were believed to have offered $160 million over seven. A later report said Cano came down to $252 million over nine years with a vesting option for a 10th year at $28 million.
The biggest issue for the Yankees is contract length, given the 10-year, $275 million disaster for Alex Rodriguez. They recently re-upped Derek Jeter for a year at $12 million.
The Mariners last winter signed Felix Hernandez to a $175 million deal over seven years that was the biggest in franchise history. The final year of the deal, when Hernandez will be 34, will pay him $27 million.
On the other hand, the Mariners have re-acquired Willie Bloomquist.
33 Comments
With the M’s luck they’ll sign him and he’ll become the new Chone Figgins.
spoken like a Mariner fan
You mean, “Spoken like a knowledgeable Mariners fan.”
Actually, you don’t have to be knowledgeable to adopt the proper cynicism.
keep your words in your own mouth and don’t put them in mine. I said what I said
I think that’s what he meant.
Get this deal done early so we can get our Cano bobbleheads before he’s traded away at the All-Star break.
Won’t be anything to trade. His average will sink as he won’t get any pitches. The good pitches will go to the other 8 players who bat their weight, at best.
They can rent him for half a season, Cliff Lee-like, then trade him for load of 4A players.
200 million can buy a lot of bobbleheads. Since they can’t afford both, they’ll go with the bobbleheads.
Production has been ordered on 2014 Bloomquist models.
Cano either has a daft sense of humor or he’s teasing the M’s in order to get a better offer from NY or some other winning franchise.
yep – no one who considers himself a winner would ever sign on with this sunken ship. Relegated to complete obscurity and irrelevance.
But with Cano, they will definitely kick the hell out of the Astros.
…probably.
… definitely maybe, I think.
Good one Art – I am in FULL agreement!
Another stupid M’s move. Ty up all your money in 1 guy for 8 years, through age 39!
When will the M’s get rid of Howard and Jack? Until they get a GM with Beane’s bona fides, they can forget about building a winner.
Actually, ownership can afford several Canos, should they care to.
Cano has a great agent who is creating leverage to raise the contract amount for his client. In the end he will sign with someone other than the Seattle Mariners if the dollar amounts are relatively similar. No player in his right mind would actually want to play for the Mariners unless he was given a contract which greatly exceeds his market value. (Willie Bloomquist)
Boy, you correspondents are a tough crowd. Is no one embracing the arrival of an All-Star in his prime? (crickets)
Right– we hear the silence. Although I heard Cano was intrigued by the possibility of playing with Bloomquist, Smoak, Ackley, and uh, I forgot the other ones already…
I thought I’d hit the apathy-barrel’s bottom until I read Lincoln’s grandiose irrelevance revealed beyond all expectations in his comments to Divish about hiring the New Armstrong. Even Cano rumours can’t paddle-start the worn-out fan-heart of long gone M’s fans. We’re like the Norwegian Blue in the Dead Parrot sketch — no matter what Lincoln tries to sell.
It would make sense for the M’s to load up unnecessarily on the middle infield. After all, they loaded up at 1B/DH with Morse, Morales, Smoak and Ibanez last season. They’re just following the pattern they’ve established.
Art, sad to say most Mariner “fans” would rather be pissed off than smart
Ted– Are you new to the M’s pathetic history, or an employee/ friend of the franchise trying to shore up their earned, well-deserved and long-lost credibility? We ‘fans’ are not stupid and pissed off– we’re justifiably angry; keenly aware of the Lincoln/Armstrong/Ellis duplicity in espousing a desire to win ballgames, field a team that could compete for the World Series rings; of their dishonesty regarding so much of what they’ve ‘reported’ to the media, their ‘poor me’ appropriation of the public coffers via the staged crocodile tears shed in public by Ellis, the lease concessions they obtained behind closed doors to the tune of about 5 million after the lease was negotiated and accepted, the way they tried to further bilk the public funding opportunity by trying to renege on the stadium overrun costs that were caused entirely by their own change orders, the way they have not–not–operated the facility entirely “for the public benefit” per their lease obligations… and their self-aggrandizing self-righteousness while they enrich themselves with neither apt risk for the reward they’ll reap, nor gratitude for the blatantly unearned windfall the public has given them as they sit on equity appreciation while returning a pitifully underperforming franchise to an otherwise deserving community. We sat through a sh—load of bad Kingdome stadium “experiences” witnessing the worst teams in the MLB and then funded a stadium that is the envy of MLB — a gilded palace gifted to the underserving who make not the slightest pretense–by their actions– of serving the debt they owe or even expressing gratitude for the trust we gave them and that they have disregarded over and over and over and over…
Nobody– nobody– seems to speak well of Lincoln, as an executive, a manager of people in his charge, as a community-builder, as a person or as the defacto looter of the franchise trust he has been handed. If such people exist, they are seemingly outnumbered by those who will testify here and elsewhere to his style and character, both. He holds the franchise–and even the board, apparently–captive and subject to his my-way-or-the-highway oversight by virtue of his relationship with the former majority owner from his previous ride with Nintendo in an expanding game market. He and Chuck got lucky and have unconscionably exploited that luck at the expense of the franchise and the community.
We have a right, and many would say an obligation as taxpayers, to be angry.
Um, what he said. Nothing to add here, Tryg used up all the words, and used them well.
Nope. I was at the first game in ’77 and would routinely walk up to 30 games a year to see my team. I am a die-hard fan who chooses to see the positives, hard as it may be sometimes, then the negatives
Until they get a truly qualified GM, it frankly doesn’t matter what they do.
THAT’S the position dunderhead Lincoln should open up their wallet for.
EVERYTHING on a great baseball team flows from the GM’s office.
Boston, LA, San Fran, Philadelphia, OAKLAND and New York are the models Lincoln should be designing the M’s after.
possibly one of these GHNM’s wants to move or there’s a well qualified asst GM to one of these teams ready for prime time.
Hire GILLICK to choose the new GM!!!!!!!!!!!! Arguably THE most successful exec the M’s have ever had. Definitely the best GM.
If you like chocolate and Mariner fans like chocolate, you’ll love bringing back Willy Wonka.
Dan-the-Man brings back the days of yesteryear and there’s still coin to be shaken out of that generation of Mariners fans.
Cano? You’ll have to ask businessman Howard if he thinks it’s better to put in a playpen in the center field beaches than to field a competitive team…
Cano will commit to dance with the groundskeepers. That should be worth $20M alone.
Exactly.
Won’t happen. Cano is just playing off the Mariners to get more money out of the Yankees…no way does a guy like Jay Z let his client go to a team where he won’t get maximum attention and mega-endorsement bucks.
Hard to argue. Cano needs two teams to make a market, and the Mariners are obliging.