I don’t think Moe would hesitate to trade some of our top talent for Machado if he thought the likely hood of him re-signing was high. But I’d be hesitant also if I felt he’s going bolt for NY the first chance he gets.

The problem is that if he's actually telling people that he's going to NYY in 2019 come hell or high water, you're just stuck.

And MLB will have become the NBA. ****ing awesome.

Yeah, if he says thats the case, move on.

And that would suck.

I would think if that were known, there wouldn't' be anyone that would trade for him.

I suspect not. And I worry that's the reason that the Orioles aren't granting teams permission to discuss an extension with him as part of trade talks.

They know what he's going to say and it will kill his value.

Which begs the question - if they know what he's going to say, why not just trade him to NYY and get the best return possible for him?

And the rest of us can shoot for 90 win seasons and hope to get lucky in the playoffs while the inevitable Boston/NY arms race throttles interest again.

If he's openly said that, the Yankees would be idiots to make that trade considering waiting 1 season nets you the same return for no cost.

Sure, but thats one less year they could have him and dominate MLB.

I'm not sure how the Yankees money shakes out but I'm pretty sure they aren't signing Manny and Bryce next year so who knows.

He hasn't.

But the Orioles can approach him and Lozano to discuss an extension and Lozano can tell them that. If he tells the Yankees that and anything is ever proven, all hell would break lose and Lozano would probably lose his agency license (which would be...y'know...not good for a guy who's getting probably 2-3% of contracts like Pujols and Machados). That's blatant tampering. Unless the Orioles give teams permission to talk to him about that kind of stuff, then mum's the word.

It's all rumor mills right now. The only parties that truly know that answer should be Machado, Lozano and the Orioles (ideally only Angelos and Duquette at that).

Like I said - if the Orioles know it to be the case and the Yankees only surmise that it could be the case, they'd be well served to simply make a trade and remove all doubt.

Gambling over 10 years with superstar shortstop because you don't want to give up a couple of prospects when your team is the revenue superstar of major league baseball would be pretty asinine.

They aren't getting Manny, O. Jeez.

Never say never

i just don't see us not being able to compete with the Yanks/Dodgers from a financial standpoint. We got $2 billion to continue to have a chance for at least another 15 years.

That's just the money part. They can make more and bigger mistakes with contracts, have more dead money on the books. But, not so much of a gap that we don't have a realistic chance to beat them on the field.

That being said, We still have to fix Mo and send Meathead packing to get back on track.

MASN in Baltimore saying the Oriolies are interested in Hicks and Kelly.

I just don't see that trade not being immediately agreed to by STL. Has to be BS.

They want more than the Cardinals can offer. I can tell you that.

"Can?" Of course not.

"Will." Now that is a different story.

We shall see...

But it's becoming less and less about what MLB teams can offer financially because the ALL have money now.

So it's becoming more and more about exposure and building a brand.

So....Not great news for flyover country.

Heyman says the Cardinals are still the #1 landing spot for Machado.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">inside baseball: assessing the machado derby. a look at 5 contenders for manny: <a href="https://t.co/BdLbD2ASrK">https://t.co/BdLbD2ASrK</a></p>&mdash; Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) <a href="https://twitter.com/JonHeyman/status/941842700067782657?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 16, 2017</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>