Right now, the MLB Winter Meetings are officially underway in San Diego. Now is a good time to remember when various current major league players said that Cole would ‘get Bryce Harper money’.
Indeed, former big league general manager Jim Bowden is on SiriusXM MLB Network Radio; and he’s forecasting a contract that approaches that sum. Take a listen to the audio featuring Bowden on this Monday morning:
Forget $200 million. The Gerrit Cole market is starting to look more like $300 million.@StevePhillipsGM and @JimBowdenGM: pic.twitter.com/4RDFTncMVk
— MLB Network Radio on SiriusXM (@MLBNetworkRadio) December 9, 2019
Equally important, Bowden points out that he predicted the largest contract in dollar amount of any analyst out there. Then he says the following:
“I had predicted eight years, $288 million for Gerrit Cole, and I believe I’m going to be low. I believe that magic $300 million, somehow he’s going to get there.”
Furthermore, former big league general manager Steve Phillips makes his own proclamation.
“I think it seems clear that if you’re in on Gerrit Cole, you’re probably going to need to go to $35 million a year.”
Already, we have mentioned that the New York Yankees have a record-size offer on the table for Cole. And the offers aren’t done coming in yet. We still have all week to go with things heating up from San Diego.
With one general manager trying to one-up the other, things could get really wild. It’s hard to disagree with Bowden on this at this time.
