Bob Nightengale, who yesterday reported that the San Diego Padres have made a seven-year contract offer to free agent first baseman Eric Hosmer, today reports that Hosmer’s old team, the Royals, have made him an offer too. It’s also seven years and it’s for $147 million.
Nightengale says that the Royals offer is for $1 million more per year than the Padres offer, which Nightengale now says is worth $140 million. The specifics — including any opt-outs or bonuses or the overall structure of the deals — are not known. Such things can, of course, make two deals which are close in overall value like these quite different in overall value.
That aside, given that the Royals seem to have topped the Padres offer by around $1 million, one gets the sense that Hosmer got the Padres offer in hand and shopped it to the Royals to see if they’d beat it. Nightengale says Hosmer wants an eight or nine year deal, but it seems unlikely that any team would do that sort of thing, even for a guy like Hosmer who is not yet 30.
Stay tuned.
