Mike Napoli Announcement Delayed, But No Need To Worry Yet

The Red Sox were set to announce their deal with Mike Napoli Tuesday, but delayed that announcement for reasons unknown. Ken Rosenthal is speculating that this could be a sign that the deal is in jeopardy--perhaps the result of a failed physical.

I wouldn't worry about that just yet.

The main indicator that there's nothing wrong is the complete lack of indicators that something has. If this is news that's going to break, it's going to be awfully late in doing so, especially since one would imagine that Napoli's agent would have hit the phones trying to find a different destination by now if the Sox weren't going to go through with the three-year, $39 million deal the two sides agreed to.

No, it seems much more likely that this is simply a 40-man roster issue. As it stands, the Sox have 39 players listed on their roster, not including Mike Napoli, Koji Uehara, or Shane Victorino. If they have an eye at anything from a major trade to a minor waiver pickup, they could well be holding the roster spot in anticipation of that. Eventually they'll have to free it up to add Napoli, but on a list of things for which timing matters, the announcement of a signing everyone has known about for better than a week ranks pretty low.