In 2008, the Red Sox missed out on signing Mark Teixeira, a prized free agent first baseman. Two years, it appears to be happening all over again.
On Saturday, the Red Sox reached an agreement to bring the Padres' Adrian Gonzalez to Boston in exchange for three high-level prospects. But now, according to Sports Illustrated's Jon Heyman, who has been all over this from the beginning, the "deal fell thru." He added that the "Red Sox just could not reach deal [with Gonzalez].
The team had until 2 p.m. EST to reach a contract extension with Gonzalez, and when that did not happen, they didn't ask for an extension of additional time from MLB. He has one year remaining on his current deal, and is set to make $6.2 million in 2011.
This doesn't mean the trade is dead, however. FoxSports' Ken Rosethal has chimed in on Twitter to break down exactly what this means.
Source: Window is closed for #RedSox to negotiate extension with AGon. Teams can still negotiate trade. This is far from over.
#RedSox can make trade and keep talking to AGon, presuming they are confident of deal. Hard to give up this much for 1-yr guy.
So the trade can still happen. But without a very strong indication that they'll be able to get an extension with Gonzalez signed either in Spring Training or sometime during 2011, it wouldn't make any sense for the Red Sox to follow through with this trade. And that'd really force Boston's hand, as Over The Monster points out:
There is a possibility that the Red Sox will choose to keep the trade anyways and continue negotiating, that would put the team's back up against the wall, forcing them to either agree to Gonzalez' contract demands or risk walking away from a deal that saw them trade two of their top-3 prospects for just one year of Gonzalez.
As Rosenthal said, this is far from over.