I would say money is the number 1 priority in overwhelming majority. That said, I expect there are competitive bids (i.e., close in money) often and player picks team based on personal preference. Sometimes it to win. Sometimes it is to be close to home. Sometimes it is close to where a player wants to be home. I expect Astros were competitive with that offer or were asking for more time to unload Reddick.
LOL. No, but it could have been a type of small difference our FO wouldn’t match. Further evidence it was more than the $$.
Competitive implies the offer was in the ballpark with the one he accepted. If it was in the same ballpark, it’s likely other factors were considered.
History shows players biggest priorities are money and winning. Luckily, for top free agents those things go hand in hand since usually only contending teams are bidding for top free agents. So often a top free agent will have multiple offers that are very close on money and all from winning teams, which allows the player to factor in additional, lower priorities. That isn’t the case with Cruz. Minnesota isn’t on the same competitive level as Houston, which points to money as the most likely reason he accepted their offer. Sure, there could be some other reason (friend on the team, he likes The Mall of the America’s, whatever), but that would be really strange and surprising. In fact, most of the time when a player says he signed with a team for a reason other than money, he is lying. Take CFM; he says he signed with Tampa because he has a house there. But most likely Tampa made the biggest offer, and him having a house there was just a bonus.
Does anyone actually think Houston made Nelson Cruz an offer within 10% of the offer the Twins made, and Cruz rejected it, despite the fact that Houston has a much better chance of winning and despite the fact that Houston features no state income tax and a more moderate climate? That would go against all logic.
Honestly I do not know what the Astros eventually offered. All I know (as I said a long time ago) is that the Astros had strong interest. My "guess" is that with Brantley signed, we felt less of a need to sign Cruz. It wouldn't make sense for Cruz to prefer Minnesota, but there could be reasons we do not know (prefers Minnesota). It could be Cruz thinks he will get more at bats in Minnesota. It could be he wants to play with Sano. At this point, I am not too worried about missing on Cruz.
Yes, I think the Astros’ offer was likely within 3 mil of the offer he took from the Twinkies. Take tax differences from that and I think his major reason had to do with more than winning and $.
Winning almost never plays into it. What is the list of players that took less money to play for a winner in MLB? Other factors play into these things all the time - just with the Astros, Beltran and Randy Johnson preferred other locales when they were free agents despite getting similar offers with high-level Astros teams. Hamels nixed a trade here because he didn't want to be in Houston. Verlander almost nixed a trade here because he was comfortable in Detroit, of all places. Carlos Lee wanted to be in Houston because he had a horse farm nearby. Players have all sorts of reasons for picking the places they go. Money is the biggest, but after that, it's a whole mix of things.
I’m not worried either; just disappointed. I don’t have a lot of faith in White, and I don’t want to rid of Reddick to take a chance on White+Tucker. I think this is our chance to reasonably improve the offense. I hope we do more.
Different people prioritize different things. For that price, very doubtful Cruz didn't have competitive offers from other teams. Occam's razor suggests there is some other reason besides winning driving Cruz.
