Tigers ignoring Alex Bregman might be screwing up his market with Red Sox

It's easy to deduce that Alex Bregman's free agency market isn't as fat as expected, and that things this offseason haven't gone according to his and Scott Boras' liking. First of all, if Bregman had received enticing offers in the last six weeks — most notably from the Boston Red Sox — he would've put pen to paper by now.

But there are more signs than just the passage of time (with no deal) pointing to Bregman's less-than-ideal leverage. Up until a super-random development that saw the Arizona Diamondbacks reportedly jump in on Bregman this week, only the Detroit Tigers and Chicago Cubs were being mentioned with any consistency as Boston's competition for Bregman in recent weeks.

Then, perhaps to Bregman and Boras' horror, it started to look like neither of those clubs were that interested. Multiple reports surfaced suggesting that the Cubs are A-okay with Matt Shaw as their third baseman. The Athletic's Jim Bowden has since asserted that Chicago could move Shaw to second, and that the Cubs are the team most capable of giving Bregman the long-term deal he wants, but Bowden's report is basically a needle in a haystack at this point when it comes to the Bregman-Cubs buzz (or lack thereof).

Tigers seem to be slowly backing away from Alex Bregman, which has made Scott Boras' job a whole lot more difficult

And what about the Tigers? Detroit's keen interest in Bregman dating back to last offseason has been well-documented, but any and all recent reporting indicates that that interest has cooled off considerably. Buster Olney provided a hint as to why during a recent episode of the Baseball Tonight podcast. Olney revealed that negotiations between the Tigers and Bregman got a little sour last year, which may have dulled enthusiasm on both sides. Olney ultimately predicted that Bregman will return to the Red Sox.

“I think those negotiations (last offseason) kind of turned a little bit nasty at the end," Olney said. "You had Scott Harris ... basically saying out loud, ‘We can win without Bregman.’ So I don’t know if that’s where, you know, (the Tigers will go). I think in the end that’s where the Red Sox land."

Have the Tigers completely messed up Bregman's market? Detroit's exit from the Bregman sweepstakes (however real or unreal it may be) would be an objectively bad development for Boras, who was presumably planning to hold up the Tigers' interest as leverage to get his client as rich an offer as possible from the Red Sox.

If Detroit is actually bowing out of the Bregman race, where does Boras turn to? The Diamondbacks news came at an oddly convenient time for Bregman ... one even starts wondering if Boras planted the D-Backs stuff in the media to ward off a crisis. Although Arizona's interest has been verified as real by multiple sources at this point — including The Athletic's Ken Rosenthal — the fact that there's suddenly buzz about the D-Backs' willingness to offer Bregman a six-year deal (!) seems far-fetched and too good to be true. So, you weren't interested until a few days ago, and now six years is on the table? Okay.

It's hard to separate rumor from report and truth from fiction these days with all of the Bregman stuff, and that benefits the third baseman. What does seem like pretty sturdy intel is that the Tigers, even if they're not completely giving Bregman the cold shoulder, aren't nearly as high on him as they were a calendar year ago.

It's beginning to feel like Bregman will just get a similar deal to the one that he received last offseason. If the Arizona stuff ends up being a mirage, Bregman might even end up regretting opting out of his remaining $80 million with the Red Sox in November. But there's still plenty of time for Boras to work his magic. The Tigers just won't be falling for it.