What gives me more last minute cynicism besides the general doomerism of being a Pirates fan is that I think Reynolds was open to a longer runway for negotiating a deal throughout ST, and now it seems like we're in a higher stakes staring context through the end of the day tomorrow/Thursday morning. I just don't like the looks of everything: Reynolds seems somewhat fine with going to LF (at least based on his public comments), but that's more of a cementation of where any kind of cautious value projection is going to grade him out.
In other words, I think him immediately moving off CF instead of moving off CF somewhat gradually over the next 2-3 years gives even less leverage or talking points to Reynolds' side of things. Maybe I am misreading, but I get the sense that Reynolds is going to be more of the permanent fixture in LF with Suwinski and Bae sharing some time in CF as an experiment.
I think the Pirates just need to be willing to go to Reynolds' AAV ask at 7 years and then it's "reasonable" on both sides. My fear is that their offers will either include some kind of benchmark escalators or just be basically the same offer he turned down but with nominally more money and option years attached or something. There's sort of two sides to it right now, IMO. On one side, if both are willing to negotiate, there isn't a lot of ground to cover to work something on. On the other side, if there's not a lot of ground to cover and there are firm points either side won't cross, then that's more to worry about in terms of the possibility being permanently cratered. I lean a little towards the latter option and that any sourced or quasi-sourced stuff from Heyman and Mackey is all stuff that's coming directly from Cherington or a proxy. I hope I am wrong.
