Jed Isn’t Exactly Being Forthright With You

I was helping my sister-in-law move from her apartment in Milwaukee to a place in Madison. So as I sit at my desk, legs barking, I’m a bit irritable. So, I thought I’d tell a story. During the move yesterday, I received a text from a familiar number. Someone in Kris Bryant’s circle. This isn’t uncommon, as we often discuss things going on with Bryant or the Cubs in general. But their comments began to make me think.

On Saturday, David Kaplan found the need to once again pass along his erroneous report that the Chicago Cubs offered Bryant a huge contract extension. This came on the heels of Jed Hoyer suggesting that the team made overtures to every Cubs’ core player and they chose not to sign.

They offered KB a big deal. I reported that years ago and it is a fact.

— David Kaplan (@thekapman) July 31, 2021

When I spoke with my contact within the Bryant camp, they told me this.

“It (Kaplan’s extension claim) was made up out of nothing. Boras never throws a number out there, NEVER. The Cubs would have had to throw a number out there. It (an offer) never happened, so the conversation ended.”

Bryant’s camp would likely concede that the Cubs and Scott Boras discussed the possibility of an extension, but from talking to the source, they continue to adamantly deny an offer was ever given.

“I put my head on the pillow every night knowing we put our best foot forward,” Hoyer told Kaplan and J-Hood. “The extensions we offered these guys will hold up exceptionally well against the open market.”

Playing devil’s advocate here, this could be a matter of semantics. In my conversations with Bryant’s camp, the talks never progressed to the point where the Cubs put a number on paper. This is an important part in any negotiation, pen to paper. Boras cannot take a verbal overture to a client. A client cannot sign an idea. Boras needed and requested an actual offer he can actually put in front of his client. The Cubs balked and never submitted anything to paper. Quite simply, if you’re dealing in hundreds of millions of dollars, a verbal handshake isn’t enough.

“(Scott) Boras will typically force the team to put something in writing to establish a base to begin negotiating from,” the source told me. “It NEVER got to that point. Boras is smart.”

Bryant wanted to have the conversation and would have loved a negotiation. Hoyer suggested they didn’t counter, but how can he counter something that wasn’t even official? When Jed spoke on the radio Monday morning, his words suggested no one countered, but we learned that wasn’t the case.

“We counteroffered then the pandemic hit,” Baez’ agent Nick Chanock said Monday.

Jesse Rogers suggests Hoyer never said *no one* countered, but he lawyer-spoke fans into believing that was the case. It now seems as if Hoyer’s authentic responses to the questions he had on-air were filled with lawyer-speak. We also know that the Cubs approached Anthony Rizzo in 2018 with an extension. Rizzo declined the deal at that time and his agent, Marc Pollack, reengaged with the Cubs in 2019 but was told they were not interested.

“The Cubs have informed us that they will not be offering Anthony an extension at this time,” Rizzo’s agent Marc Pollack said from the winter meetings. “Anthony has let his desire to be a Cub for life known to the organization. Although we do not know what the future holds, a deal to make that happen will not be addressed now.”

Now, Hoyer suggested that these players would say publicly that they wanted to be Cubs for life, but didn’t reciprocate that at the negotiating table. But these are now three instances where we know Jed either didn’t offer or didn’t listen to a counteroffer. So, which is it, Jed? Did they not negotiate, or did they just come back with figures you didn’t like, so you stopped the conversation?

Here is Hoyer’s response to Rizzo’s extension conversation – or lack thereof.

“We’ve had conversations with lots of our guys over a five-year period, and it’s always best to keep it quiet. I think in this case, Rizzo’s agent decided to talk about it and we did have some conceptual talks about what an extension would look like, and I think that candidly, we were pretty far apart in terms of length, and so he decided to come out and say that.”

I’m rather flabbergasted on how Hoyer would know how far apart Rizzo and the Cubs were if there were no negotiations or counters.

I noticed an interesting term, “overture to sign”. This was something Hoyer used in his interview on WSCR-AM 670. He suggested they made overtures to all the core players. What is an overture? It is essentially the beginning of a conversation. In my business meetings, when we arrange a meeting, I will provide you an overture suggesting I want to earn your business. Then we have multiple more meetings where we negotiate. I wasn’t there for the overture, but it sounds like the Cubs closed doors on each player long before the player did so on the Cubs.

In Bryant’s case, Boras isn’t dumb. He isn’t going to propose a price to the Cubs first, they lose all leverage at that point. He needs the club to provide a number to him for a conversation to even begin. The KB camp denies that happened. Boras will not bring a hypothetical to a client, so no negotiation could happen. A legal representative shouldn’t deal in what if’s, and shame on the Cubs if they believed they would. Knowing that the Cubs stopped the Baez negotiations in 2020, told Rizzo they won’t discuss a deal in 2019 (yes, they did open the door again in 2021), how is it so surprising that they didn’t continue good faith negotiations with Bryant?

To further this, outside Kaplan, no other Cubs beat reporter verified this story. None. Kaplan received so much backlash that he eventually backtracked his own statements. The backlash from colleagues and media members just doesn’t happen that easily.

That report that Kris Bryant rejected a Cubs extension offer "well north of $200 million" in the last several months? A source close to the situation said it's "simply not true." That and more on Kris Bryant and what he's hoping to do in 2019. https://t.co/mr3UHuMAZz

— Sahadev Sharma (@sahadevsharma) October 11, 2018

When Kaplan was challenged, his report went from a “massive deal worth north of $200 million” to him saying he guessed that a deal should have been in that area. We somehow forgot this, but Kaplan was just guessing, essentially throwing numbers into the wind and hoping they stuck. Probably, more importantly, hoping you listened to him. Now, I don’t think he was lying and I think he was told something by someone in the Cubs organization. But, as teams and agents do, they sometimes tell someone a piece of information to help them out with their plans.

That could explain why literally, no one else could verify it. That led to Kaplan backtracking his own report. We showed you how Hoyer wasn’t exactly truthful when discussing Baez or Rizzo extensions. Bryant denied his offer ever happened. But we’re just gonna trust Hoyer, after a weekend-long fan tirade all over social media and radio? We should believe Kaplan, the only member of any media that said this happened? When Bryant himself stood so steadfast and wouldn’t back of denying this, that should tell you something.

“I’ve always had the stance that ‘Yes, I want to play here, I love the city.’  The biggest thing with the whole trade rumors that has disappointed me is the fact that I feel like people, not everybody, but the main reasoning behind it that ‘let’s get rid of him now because he doesn’t want to be here in two years, he turned down this monster extension well north of $200 million and I’m like ‘Well, where was that? I never saw that,” said Bryant. “These rumors and sources and people just saying things. The only thing that matters is what comes from my mouth and never once have I said I never wanted to play here.

“I’m pretty sure you guys can go through all of the recordings, all the interviews. I’ve always said I’ve respected everybody in this organization, everybody in the city, the fans. We have is so good here, and of course, I’d love to play here.”

I have been told by people close to Bryant that they believe he would have accepted less to stay in Chicago. Those same people told me that they urged Bryant to look elsewhere, especially when some fans turned on him. But he stood pat on his desire to retire a Cub. This lends more credibility to their words for me that an offer never happened.

So when Jed suggests his biggest source of frustration from this era was not signing players to extension, to me, it’s hogwash. I don’t know why Hoyer couldn’t get players to commit. It seems to be more of a Cubs problem than a player issue. Think about Rizzo, who sees lesser players getting more than him, some on the same team, and the club offers $60 million less than his closest comparable? Baez seemed to have the most solid offer of the bunch, but when the club negotiated with him, their counter happened before COVID. When they wanted to re-open those negotiations, the Cubs said no, we’ll pass.

They used the pandemic as a reason to shut down shop, while teams like the Chicago White Sox, LA Dodgers, and San Diego Padres looked at it as an opportunity.

It seems too coincidental that the Cubs are taking a lot of heat right now, and Hoyer conveniently suggests they tried with all of them. Even after the last three years proved otherwise. So, they traded the trio responsible for the club’s most successful run in over 100 years. The most successful players since Johnny Evers, Joe Tinker, and Frank Chance. If you realize it or not, the Cubs – Jed Hoyer specifically – needed to tread carefully and start winning the PR battle.

Players in this league talk. They see Hoyer throwing the organization’s best players under the bus after trading them. They see the compliment bouquet Kris Bryant gave Hoyer, while Hoyer tossed him under the bus then backed it up over him again. Hoyer knew he isn’t going to get checked by any player that left, and it doesn’t make sense for an agent to get into a media war with any team.

Simply, either Jed Hoyer lied to Chicago or he misremembers how things went down. Now, I respect the situation Hoyer happens to be in, but to throw these guys under the bus was not the right play. To top it off, one of those players is represented by the man that represents the best players in the game today. Just look at Boras’s 2021 free-agent class, Bryant, Corey Seager, Max Scherzer, JD Martinez, Michael Conforto, Jackie Bradley Jr., Trevor Rosenthal, (and possibly a FA) Nicholas Castellanos. Did the Cubs just lose a chance to negotiate with them?

Don’t believe that Hoyer’s radio spots weren’t purposeful. Through a multimillion-dollar PR team, Hoyer jumped on Kaplan’s show first. Kaplan was the man to originally tell the KB extension story, so it made sense. He then let that story sit in the ether for a few hours before joining Bernstein and Rahimi. With the story getting spread, he could nail the landing with the later interview.

What sucks is, most fans accepted him at his word and may no longer question the moves. It was all lip service from Bryant, Rizzo, and Baez, they never wanted to be here. I received multiple DMs from fans already today suggesting the players were just too greedy and forced Hoyer’s hand. Look, Hoyer was a good corporate man today, helping to shape the narrative. Jed’s strings are being pulled by Tom Ricketts like Geppetto pulls the strings of Pinocchio. Similarly, Hoyer’s nose was growing with each interview he gave.