"While I’d be thrilled to have him part of the organization for the long term, the early signals indicate his cost will be greater than our ability to pay."

As I said earlier via "twitter", Why would Jeff Moorad, NEED to say NOW PUBLICLY that the Padres cannot keep Adrian Gonzalez UNLESS a trade was imminent?! In so many words of course...

Even if Moorad was asked a direct question, I am not so sure he had to answer it differently than they have from before?

where was this quote from?!?!

This quote,

"While I’d be thrilled to have him part of the organization for the long term, the early signals indicate his cost will be greater than our ability to pay."

Was on the UT and also MLBtraderumors.com

While the timing for this isn't great, at least the guy's being honest. Could've said, "we'll see what happens and do all we can to keep him in San Diego. You never know about these things." I mean that's the kind of stuff we don't wanna hear since it seems inevitable that Adrian is worth more than this team can afford and will be gone anyway. Honesty with the fans from the front office is sort of hard to get used to for us I think.

ok I have some serious problems with this whole thing. I'll try to lay this all out here.

1. First, thing this just screams out leverage to me. Boggs is trying to use Teixeria numbers to establish value and Moorad is trying to cry poor.

2. No one over pays for talent like the Yankees (although the Dodgers are a close second). My point is that the Yankees are not in need of a 1B, so the number Boggs is throwing out to establish a starting point needs to come down....a lot! The only other teams that could/would pay big money for Adrian are the Red Sox and the Dodgers. The Dodgers will not be throwing down a ton of money with the divorce going on. The Red Sox rarely over spend and they are not idiots, they don't bid against themselves often.

3. I can only hope that Moorad realizes that the San Diego market alone is not the key to the Padres payroll, but it's also the market to the south. The best opportunity the Padres will ever have to tap that market is with Adrian Gonzalez, who will be regarded as the greatest Mexican pro baseball player of all time.

With that said, I think Boggs needs to really look at around 15M. Moorad is probably looking at 10M at this point. If these guys can meet in the middle on a 6 year $75M deal, we could work this out.

Last point, their was a study done a while back (I'm trying to find it) that took the value of a player that was able to stay in a market in comparison to moving markets and re-establishing himself. It found that players leaving markets may make more in terms of salary, but make less overall because of the current endorsements as well as the endorsements once they retire. Think about how often we see Tony Gwynn even now. AG could be doing color for the Spanish Broadcast in 12 years.

Giving up a couple million to play in Boston would easily be recouped in current and future endorsements in San Diego and in the entire country of Mexico.

This can work out, but considering Boggs has said that he hasn't heard from Hoyer yet, and Moorad is crying poor isn't helping the situation. It's just making those rabid Red Sox fans talk about the Padres as if we are their AAA team. Now that pisses me off!

Hoyer: too early to draw conclusions about Adrian.

According to the Boston Globe, Padres general manager Jed Hoyer said trading Adrian Gonzalez is not a foregone conclusion.

"The team’s position with regard to Adrian has not changed at all," Hoyer wrote in an email. "We are excited to have him under contract for the next two seasons. He is a great player who fits our city, team, and payroll remarkably well. We have had, and will continue to have, dialogue with Adrian’s representatives about keeping him in San Diego long-term. It is still early in that process and attempting to draw conclusions in the middle of any negotiation is an inexact science." Hoyer assessment is certainly more optimistic than that of team CEO Jeff Moorad, who said on Wednesday that "early signals" are that Gonzalez will be too rich for the Padres."


Playing some damage control?

"Playing some damage control?"

Yeah i wonder if he got a little pissed at Moorad's quote. If Adrian is leaving then the Padres at least want to keep some leverage.

I agree, the Padres are already limited to a certain degree because there are NOT many teams that can afford Adrian (Prospect wise).

I do not see how that helped the situation, two weeks before spring training no less.