While Rizzo acknowledged that he coveted many players on the Red Sox roster, and that Boston represented a “reasonable match on paper,” he ultimately felt that the Red Sox gave him an offer he could very much refuse.
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“I dont think we laughed away any of them,” Rizzo told the Herald. “We took them all serious. We were fortunate to be in a position where we didn’t have to move the player and if we would’ve got the right deal we would’ve. The right deal is in the eye of the beholder and we felt like we needed to get legitimate value for who ZImmermann was, and not the fact that he has one year left of control.”
Zimmermann, who was also the subject of offseason trade rumors involving the Cubs, will become a free agent at season’s end, his seventh as a National.
