If Detroit Tigers designated hitter Victor Martinez never injured his left knee last week who knows what would've happened with the Prince Fielder sweepstakes. And there's a decent chance that the slugging first baseman could've landed with the Rangers.
But after the Tigers showed they were committed to paying over $200 million to replace Martinez and lock up one of the best power hitters for nine years, the Rangers weren't close to making a matching proposal.
"At the end of the day, what he got from Detroit, we weren't in the ballpark," Rangers general manager Jon Daniels said Friday on 103.3's The Ben and Skin Show [KESN-FM]. "We were multiple years off."
Daniels added: "I do think, when you're looking at Detroit, he got the most money from a very good team, so had that option not been there, might he have considered taking less from us to be in a championship environment? I don't know the answer that. I know we liked him, we liked the fit. We also weren't going to kind of throw away everything we believe in as far as contracts and things like that.
"When you plug him into our lineup, it has a chance to be silly. And that's no disrespect to Mitch Moreland. Prince is one of a handful of guys that can impact a lineup like that and put big runs on the board. At 27 years old, it kind of fits where we're going over not just this year, but the next few.
"If we could get him, we were certainly interested in it, but we knew we were going to draw a line, and we communicated that pretty early on. The response all along was that wasn't going to get it done and obviously, ultimately, it didn't."
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Follow Jon Machota on Twitter: @jonmachota
