The Daily News blames Jay-Z for the breakdown of the negotiations between the Mariners and Robinson Cano:
According to two sources briefed on the situation, negotiations between the free agent second baseman’s lone stalking horse — the Mariners — and Cano’s camp — led by rapper-turned super-agent Jay Z and CAA’s Brodie Van Wagenen — collapsed after Jay Z apparently overplayed his hand in a negotiating session with the Mariners Thursday.
Cano and his camp arrived in Seattle with what sources described as basically an eight-year deal for $200 million in hand and the assurances that Seattle would go to nine years and $225 million. But when Jay Z then upped the ante to 10 years for $252 million, Mariners president Howard Lincoln apparently “exploded,” according to one of the sources, and ended the meeting.
Cano’s agent may have done the Mariners a favor. If the Yankees don’t come close to the Seattle offer, the Mariners could offer Robinson eight years, $190 million, and still land the second baseman. I know that when buying a car, it’s good to say no to all offers the first day and leave the dealership. Maybe that’s what Lincoln did here.
If nothing else, the Yankees don’t need to raise their offer at the moment.
It could also be that Jay Z didn’t get into the agent business so he could send his first big client from New York to Seattle, and so he raised the demand to blow up the negotiations in hopes that the Yanks would get back in.
Or, as it turns out, it could be that Jay-Z knew exactly what he was doing.
Good day for him.
Good day for jay z, bad for everyone else. Only in America as Don King would say.
Jay Z: He’s not a businessman. He’s a business, man.