We Tried Tracker Update: Bo Beset, Stolen Arenado Edition

One of the reasons I’ve enjoyed tracking We Trieds over the past year is that there’s so much gray area involved. When a team gets the word out that it was also interested in a player who signed with another team, that information takes a circuitous journey. Its source is indeterminate. It’s usually laundered through one or several reporters. When it finally makes its way into the discourse, it emerges on social media, slips out during a podcast, or appears in boldface at the top of a sports section. You’re never quite sure whether the phrasing comes from the reporter or the source or some combination of the two. Most importantly, you never know how much truth is behind it.

The Mets “had some interest” in Pete Alonso, “showed interest” in Raisel Iglesias, “checked in on” Robert Suarez, and “made a reasonable try” for Tyler Rogers. Which player did they want the most? Which player did they expend the most effort to land? Even if you have strong opinions about what all of those words actually mean, you can’t ever be sure. The absence of hard facts leaves plenty of room for interpretation and silly jokes. Today, however, we’re going to focus on two We Trieds that seem, if anything, too real. Will we still make stupid jokes? Yes, we will. We will make them extra stupid. That’s not just our right; it’s our sacred duty.

We’ll start in Philadelphia, where the Phillies didn’t just try to sign Bo Bichette; they thought they’d already done so. Maybe. It depends who you ask. USA Today’s Bob Nightengale reported that the Phillies “had agreed to Bo Bichette’s request for a 7-year, $200 million deal last night and believed they would sign him until the Mets swooped in,” and many other reporters confirmed that description. However, president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski denied that it was a done deal, telling reporters, “I can’t say that we ever thought it was done.” What he described instead was a situation where the deal was as close to completion as possible without being official: “We thought it was going to happen, but it wasn’t done… Until you sign a memo of understanding, you don’t have a deal done.”

That’s a fair point, but it’s a fine one, and Dombrowski also described Bichette’s decision as a “gut punch.” The scenario Dombrowski described leaves a lot room for interpretation. On the tamer side, maybe the Phillies were told Bichette would sign if they met his terms, then they called to say they would meet the terms only to find out that while they were deliberating, New York’s big offer had changed his mind. That would be frustrating for the Phillies, but by no means some great betrayal. On the spicier side, maybe the two sides had agreed to a deal and everything was done except that final signature on the memo of understanding, and then Bichette suddenly reneged on the handshake agreement. That really would be an extreme situation. We have no way of knowing the details, but we do know that however it went down, the Phillies came away feeling like they got jobbed. To illustrate, here’s a year-old picture of Dombrowski looking shocked and president of business operations Sam Fuld looking chagrined.

On The Phillies Show podcast, three Phillies experts expressed the team’s outrage. Todd Zolecki of MLB.com said the front office was “livid” when it found out that Bichette was signing elsewhere. He described it as “kind of a rug pulled out from under them situation.” Ruben Amaro Jr. said, “I thought the Phillies thought they had him in their hands.” Jim Salisbury of PHLY compared it to the heist in Goodfellas, and I probably don’t need to remind you that just about everybody in that heist ended up dead. However, my most important takeaway was that The Phillies Show podcast looks a bit like a sportswriting-themed slot machine that just paid out big money by landing on three dudes in hoodies.

Jackpot! One small but revealing kernel of fact came from Dombrowski. He said the Phillies were limited to signing only one of either Bichette or J.T. Realmuto, and that the Bichette talks progressed far enough that Dombrowski reached out to Realmuto’s camp to let them know there wouldn’t be a deal. It’s hard to imagine him making that call unless he was very, very sure that the Bichette deal was about to be done. When it came undone, the Phillies had to awkwardly call Realmuto and his agent back to the table. Deep embarrassment is not exactly the best starting point for a negotiation. No wonder Realmuto got more years and dollars than anybody expected. I’m surprised he didn’t get a pony, too.

All of this is to say that while I filed this in the We Tried Tracker under the heading of, “We offered X dollars over X years,” I also would have felt justified filing it under a new category titled, “We totally had him and then the Mets stole him from us and we’re super pissed now, man. Just super, unbelievably pissed. Damn it.”

A less dramatic version of this story played out in Sacramento. The Cardinals finally traded Nolan Arenado to the Diamondbacks last week. Arizona won the Arenado sweepstakes by offering to take on more money than the Padres. However, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reported that the A’s also had a deal in place for Arenado, and they were going to take on more of Arenado’s salary than either the Diamondbacks or the Padres. Why didn’t the deal go through? Why aren’t we hearing stories about David Forst punching holes in the drywall and vowing to have his revenge on Chaim Bloom if it’s the last thing he does?

Because Nolan Arenado has a no-trade clause, and no-trade clauses were invented with the express purpose of making sure that no one with any semblance of control over their employment situation ever has to spend more than four days in Sacramento. Rosenthal described the situation gently: “Arenado indicated he would not necessarily approve a trade to the A’s, a person familiar with his thinking said.” It’s hard to believe that the A’s were expecting any outcome other than this one, even as they negotiated the deal. On the other hand, it’s all too easy to picture the many ways in which Arenado might have “indicated” that he wasn’t interested in playing for the A’s.

Before we close out, I’d like to note a milestone that I’d been awaiting eagerly since the beginning of this exercise. Earlier this month Chris Cotillo of MassLive relayed from a source that the Red Sox had “kicked the tires” on Kazuma Okamoto. Just to clarify, Okamoto is a human being with hopes and dreams. He is not now and never has been an automobile. While I’m generally opposed to language that objectifies or commoditizes baseball players (or any human beings, for that matter), I have to admit that I will give this particular expression a pass because it’s simply too fun. I can’t believe it took us so long to see it. I would gladly kick the tires on any ballplayer, either metaphorically or, should I happen to catch them while they’re riding a scooter, literally.

As always, I’ll close with a plea for help. Should you spot any We Trieds out there in the wild, please let me know. The We Tried Tracker currently has 50 entries, nine behind last year’s pace. I’m sure I’ve missed many, and we would be even further behind without the diligent reporting of JD and FoxMulderBatFlip. You can pass your We Trieds along to me on Bluesky, or you can email me at WeTriedTracker@gmail.com, a real email address that I really check. I even check the spam folder, because you never know when Warren Buffett is going to email you from a very not suspicious email address, with the subject line “ATTENTION,” to tell you with very normal grammar and punctuation that you are one of the lucky, randomly selected people to whom he is going to donate $4.8 million.

This seems like a done deal to me. I just hope the Mets don’t swoop in.