“The Sacramento A’s were one of those teams. They were gonna use him at third base,” Rosenthal said on the podcast. ” … What happened in that case was they had a deal in place with the Cardinals, I’m told. And the deal was one in which they were taking on more money than the Diamondbacks ultimately did. … The A’s were gonna pay more (than the Diamondbacks) and in that respect, it was a better deal that the Cardinals would have gotten. But Arenado indicated he would rather they continue negotiating with teams like the Diamondbacks. … The Padres wanted Arenado to play first base. And that would have been a position change for him but this guy’s a 10-time Gold Glove winner at third, or whatever it is. I would feel comfortable that he would have adapted to first. And the Padres’ thought process was ‘We really don’t want to really pay any of this. We want the Cardinals to pay the vast, vast majority of this (contract).'”
