8/23-8/25 Red Sox @ Dodgers Series Thread

Cherington talked about the ability to improve as a negotiator, and the Red Sox take active, deliberate strides to that end. They actually take notes, be it on an agent or another franchise.

Did you start high and brow beat your way into a better offer, or were you reasonable from the get-go? The Sox will remember, and they expect you to remember how they treated you too. Like Cherington said, it's a small world.

They keep a store of negotiating scouting reports, you could say.

"There are agents who develop sort of trends over time for their style and you take note of that, just like they take note of us too," Cherington said. "Every agent has a book on the teams and about how they do business. Same with other teams. We'll have notes about — in any negotiation we do, we keep notes, so that we know, we have some history for the style of back and forth. 'They said this, it means this,' and that type of thing. I think negotiating in baseball is a little bit different than other businesses because of the small world we live in, and also because a lot of the time, especially with trades, you know the goal really is to help both teams. If both teams prosper, then that's good."