They want to refute it strongly because if a team does try and beat their offer, the Sox would rather have a team push up against a 7/200 offer rather than an 8/250.
When that call from Lozano comes and says "X team went past your offer, will you beat theirs?" you dont want their offer to be artificially inflated from the start. It just makes more ground for you to have to cover to get back to being the top offer