John Boggs, the agent for Red Sox 1B Adrian Gonzalez, arrived in Fort Myers yesterday afternoon. He didn’t waste any time getting down to business, as he met earlier today with Theo Epstein and Ben Cherington to discuss a contract extension for A-Gon.
After the meeting, he said he would be “extremely surprised” if the sides didn’t eventually come to an agreement: “We had a good meeting with Theo (Epstein) and Ben Cherington, tried to pick up momentum we had in the beginning of December when we were in Boston. Everything went really well. What we’re on schedule to do is hopefully get something resolved some point in April and move from there.”
Boggs again stated the parties do not have an agreement in place, as has been speculated in many media circles (including here). He said the deal could get done any time, and that it isn’t contingent on the Albert Pujols and Prince Fielder deals getting finalized with St Louis and Milwaukee, respectively. He said that A-Gon set his bottom line early in the process and he is just waiting for the ballclub to meet his price: “He isn’t concerned with chasing after or breaking records, he just wants to be fairly compensated. You can be very wealthy and play for a team that you don’t want to play for, or you can be very wealthy and play for a team you want to play for and is in competition every year. That’s what his goal was: to be treated fairly, compensated fairly and be on a ball club that is year-after-year competitive.”
He said Gonzalez and the ballclub both understand the other party’s position and what it will take to get a deal done: “Our meeting really consisted in catching up with them on particulars we left off in December and try to advance those. I’m sure we made pretty good strides there.”
According to the agent, this was the first time the sides had spoken since early-December when the parties were unable to finalize a deal. But he said that should not be viewed in a negative context: “There are very positive feelings on both sides. There are a lot of relationships in the past… There’s so many relationships involved here that if you can’t have an understanding on an agreement, I probably can’t have it anywhere.”
