Jeff Wilson of the Fort Worth Star Telegram has a new blog post up discussing the market for lefty starter C.J. Wilson.
While he says that there are five teams "in the hunt" for Wilson -- with the Angels, Rangers, Marlins, and Nats join by the ever-popular "mystery team" -- the most interesting part is that a major league source is telling Jeff Wilson that one team has made a six year offer to Wilson.
Now, it isn't clear whether this is six years guaranteed, or five years with a team option and buyout, or five years with a vesting option. Still, the consensus seemed to be that Wilson was going to get at least five years, and every offseason, it seems like one team ends up deciding to trump the others by adding an extra year on top of whatever the expected contract length was going to be. Thus, it wouldn't surprise me if there was a legit, six year guaranteed deal out there right now.
I predicted a few weeks ago that C.J. would end up inking a 6 year, $105 million contract, and I'm standing by that prediction. My guess is that the team will be the Washington Nationals, which would provide Wilson with both the chance to hit and with a nice pitcher-friendly home park to pitch in.
Wilson also notes that the Rangers made C.J. a 4 year, $48 million offer before the 2011 season. I'm assuming that would have been for 2011-14. backing out the $7 million he made in 2011, that means they offered C.J. a 3 year, $41 million offer to forego free agency -- just shy of $14 million per year, and not a bad offer for a guy with one year as a starter under his belt. That said, I can understand why C.J. would have passed on that.