RammyFanny

If it's true, I'd guess it's being announced at the convention. I'm going with them saving the Tanaka announcement til the convention. That's my story, and you can all pat me on my back when it's true. Or point and laugh when it's not. I doubt it. Considering they have a deadline next week, I'm assuming they are going to give the interested teams all the time they need to negotiate and submit their best bid. That and the fact Ty already said it wasn't player related.

Playing along with the teases... Has the secret been guessed already by anyone? Or all we all off base? With this build up, I get the feeling the secret will end up being to drink more Ovaltine.

In case anyone was wondering, it appears teams don't have to submit the 20 million posting fee first before talking to him. Only pay it when he's actually signed. So the whole "every team should bid 20 million, even if it's just for PR" is kind of moot. There's no waiting for any posting fees to be accepted or anything, it's already a free for all.

Good stuff TT. Thanks.

It's a pretty common theme for always backloading deals or keeping it flat if possible, time value of money, etc., but wouldn't there possibly be some incentive to frontload a deal with Tanaka? Quick thoughts: - A declining salary allows us to pay some of the huge bucks for his first year or two and being able to spend more in future offseasons, having him at a relatively affordable per year salary when we're actually competing. I think we have the space to do this if we want to considering us penny pinching other moves. - I presume a frontloaded deal would be preferable for Tanaka. Who wouldn't like to get paid more and sooner? - If a frontloaded deal is preferable for Tanaka, it might help in deterring the Yankees if they are still concerned with the tax. - If it gets to a point where he's an albatross later in the deal, you're going to have to pick up almost all of what he's owed anyways when trying to trade him. - I don't know, there's just something appealing to me about having him at something like 14 million per year when we're ready to go all out on spending, and are hopefully starting to consistently win, instead of continually paying him 22+ a year (or more if backloaded). I feel like we'd be in a position to utilize this to our advantage considering a chunk of the other teams involved are already operating near their limits (i'm assuming we aren't).

Reading some guy on Schuster's Facebook status... Stupid to even try to reason with these people obviously, but it doesn't make me want to punch a wall any less.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AkhDlMg1E8 Saw this last night and immediately assumed Theo max texted this before the meetings.

I'd imagine MLB would see that as circumventing the agreement (and would probably be even more strict since the rules just passed in order to set precedent). But who knows what could happen under the table.

if they grab Choo and Tanaka, and trade Samardzija for near-ML ready pitching, I would look at this offseason as a success. Sounds like an either/or situation. Tanaka alone would be a success. Choo and a strong Samardzija trade would be a success. All 3 and I'm giddy. That's what I interpreted it as too, with Tanaka as plan A. Although Choo might get scooped up before Tanaka leaving us with an even higher chance of being left out in the cold.

I'm sure Tanaka will be begging to be posted given him being able to make even more money after the recent agreement. Although it's still up to the club, technically.

From the BN comments: lol'd.

I haven't got into specifics regarding the TV deal to know if this amount is expected, but Wittenmeyer expressed concern that the Cubs might not be able to double their TV deal with there being few suitors, and Theo responded that they will double it easily. Said it in a matter of fact way. And he called Wittenmeyer a "recent expert" in TV deals when he disagreed so that was fun.

Hate to say it but with Friedell and Wittenmeyer next to him, Kaplan almost seems like the voice of reason.

Theo kind of just blew off the whole report about the Cubs and the bid money/debt thing from today and said it all comes from the same pool of money regardless.

If you had the choice, do you take Tanaka choosing one team to negotiate with or all teams that tie being able to offer him their best deal?

Don't really trust him but we'll see.

Twitter seems to be running with the worst record tiebreaker, but i'm not seeing any sources behind that.

Have they been mentioned at all about lying in the weeds re: Shark? It's probably a 300 mill for Cano or something, but the first instinct is to tie every rumor into something about the Cubs.

I doubt it happens, but it'll be interesting to see if the worst record gets him first thing is still on the table. Still think we'd have a better shot with that compared to letting him choose from all the teams who bid 20 million. But it would be pretty shocking if that ended up going through.

http://ht.ly/rrSbf

Plus one less front line starter available hopefully means Shark's value goes slightly up.

I stuck a stepback J in George Hill's eye at a local college he was practicing at (I think it was the year before he was drafted). Okay, so I might have been pretty open, but he totally halfway raised his hand up. And I will forever will claim to be a better player than him because of that moment.

In the interviews I watched, he funnily goes from old white guy accent to Ozzie Guillen accent in the blink of an eye. He actually gives a pretty great interview though, it's not hard to see how he could win people over. Definitely the opposite of the Sveum prototype.