"They have the highest offer on the table," said one of the GMs.
One of the GMs responded to Red Sox owner John Henry's comment to the Boston Herald that the Sox would not go 10 years on any player with, "No one's going there [10 years]."
"We all have limits," Henry said in an e-mail to the Associated Press yesterday. "Eight years is a very long time in baseball and everywhere else. Baseball as a whole has not yet been hit by the financial crisis, but it will. The degree is in question and won't be answered for a while."
But who knows?
The Yankees were willing to go two more years than anyone else on CC Sabathia, so why not on Teixeira?
One of the GMs concluded the Yankees were the fly in the ointment, but "Manny [Ramírez is] going to the Yankees."
Still, the Yankees were intriguing. As Foxsports.com's Ken Rosenthal so aptly put it in a column yesterday, the Yankees have the ability to really hurt the Red Sox by signing Teixeira because New York's Plan B is Ramírez, and there's no chance the Red Sox could entertain Plan B, thus leaving the Red Sox with an offense pretty much like the one that ended the season.
Which is why there was such a strong shift toward Boston as being the team that lands Teixeira. They almost can't afford not to sign him.
First off, if the Red Sox don't come off Henry's stand of not giving a player 10 years, they could up the ante on the average annual salary, which is apparently what has happened. At 10 a.m. yesterday, one GM involved in the talks indicated that if the talks had ended right then, the Red Sox would land Teixeira. At 6 p.m., that same GM said, "I still think it's the Red Sox."
If Teixeira went to the Red Sox, will the Yankees counter with Ramírez?
The Yankees would love the Ramírez drama, especially vs. the Red Sox at a new stadium and with YES ratings likely to go through the roof as the Sox-Yankees rivalry would be redefined. The New York Daily News has already reported the Yankees have a three-year, $66 million offer out to Manny. Angels manager Mike Scioscia has also been talking up Manny to a local radio station and said he's contacted Terry Francona about Manny's past problems with the team.
