Baseballhead:
Rumor With a View

Michael Cox

Good eye, well comb two a phonetically-spelled Baysbawlhead...nope, sorry, that's already annoying me. Like you, I was keen to take in the wonders of this year's Academy Awards™ ceremony, but unfortunately I chose as my venue the stream-of-consciousness Oscar™-night ranting of film loony Harry Knowles. However, upon hearing the Ain't It Cool server creak and buckle under the weight of its traffic, I got out with my life shortly after the Best Screenplay award.

On to baseball, where the final week of spring training is revealing the holes many teams foolishly thought they could plug using prospects, aging veterans signed to minor-league deals (hey, Pete Incaviglia!), and in a couple of extreme cases, Rule V draft picks. Other teams are finding they don't have holes so much as craters (hey, Reds!).

Thus, trade rumors are running thicker than dog slobber (a touching turn of phrase we often use down at the country club). If you're a long-time Strikethree.com reader, you know better than to believe every rumor you read. In fact, the rumor-to-actual-deal ratio of certain particular baseball writers seems to indicate that they're a frequent target of practical jokes:

Team Official #1: I'm bored.

Team Official #2: Me too. What say we prank-call Gammons and tell him we're trading our entire rotation for Pudge Rodriguez?

Team Official #1: Ooo.

So it is in this spirit that we present our special, annotated version of the most-talked-about spring rumors...

The Rangers will move Hank Blalock for pitching. The biggest buzz of the year (so far) is that Tom Hicks may or may not be open to sending away the Rookie of the Year favorite for a starter or two. Various reports have GM John Hart talking with Toronto, Baltimore, and even Tampa Bay ("Hello. My boss says I have to ask you what you'll give me for Blalock").

The most equitable of these deals would send Blalock to SkyDome for RHP Chris Carpenter and OF Vernon Wells. In this context, I use the term "equitable" loosely -- it's the kind of trade that makes you wonder if Jim Bowden is advising the Rangers for extra cash. It's especially silly when you hear that the Jays also asked that Gabe Kapler and Mario Ramos be thrown in.

My prediction: Blalock stays put for the time being. Hicks and Hart will hate each other by the All-Star break, and after firing Hart, Hicks will panic and sell off Blalock to the highest bidder. I will then laugh.

The Rangers will move Mark Teixeira for pitching. Now this could happen. With a glut of corner infielders on the big club already, Teixeira has nowhere to go but to another organization. So how come everybody's talking about Blalock?

The Rangers agreed to try out Ruben Rivera only if he promised to sell only John Rocker's stuff. Look for beer-stained (on the back) game-worn jerseys on Ebay.

Billy Beane wants Jack Cust. Bad. Yes, to hear it told, the A's GM is using every Jedi mind trick at his disposal in an attempt to pry the can't-miss slugger from the Rockies' clutches. "This is not the outfielder you want. David Justice is the one you need."

But Rockies GM Dan O'Dowd isn't buying it...yet. He's been willing to tell anyone who asks that Cust is not only all that and a packet of crisps with the bat, but that the kid's not nearly the defensive liability he's been made out to be. The next step in O'Dowd's plan is undoubtedly to acquire Glenallen Hill and Al Martin to play beside Blalock.

My prediction: if Beane doesn't pry Cust from O'Dowd's cold, dead fingers by late May, it may be too late, especially if Cust has already hit 20 homers in the Denver air.

The Yankees covet Shannon Stewart. This is an interesting one -- Gammons and his ESPN protege, Jayson Stark, seem to have opposing views as to whether a potential deal for Stewart is dead in the water or not. Gammons says it wasn't much of a deal anyway: Jays GM J.P. Ricciardi proposed swapping Stewart for Nick Johnson, then both teams had a good laugh. On the other hand, Stark apparently believes this deal, as well as every other deal anyone has so much as joked about in public, could well happen.

The truth is that Steinbrenner is involved in more of his team's moves than he has in years, and if there are issues early on, like the annual Rondell White injury, remember Ken Phelps.

Ricciardi doesn't like his players calling him "a pimp." I think I know a certain GM who could use a bit more MTV.

The Royals want to deal Neifi Perez. Wouldn't you?

Current buzz has the hapless shortstop going to either the Reds, where they would give him the Pokey Reese Memorial Barry Larkin Injury Replacement role, or the Marlins, where they apparently forgot to bring Perez's scouting report from Montreal.

Pirates OF Derek Bell is about to go into "Operation Shutdown." What do you mean, "about to"? Bell seems to have been in "Operation Shutdown" for well over a year already.

The Expos will be getting bupkus. That's not necessarily so. This is a team that should be making big packages of minor-leaguers and trading them for decent veterans at the end of their contracts...that is, if they really aren't paying lip service to winning. There is no next year. Deal, and deal now.

On the other hand, it's likely Uncle Bud has instructed the team not to make such trades in order to keep them attractive to potential new owners in DC. Of course, such an instruction would be a conflict of interest on so many levels, but if you can give me one example of that stopping him before, I'll eat a bug

That's not one of those Rob Dibble-type promises, either.

about the author

Michael Cox isn't sure exactly what kind of bug he would eat, but notes that his cat prefers moths. Do not, we repeat, do not send beetle snouts to mc@strikethree.com.