One of the fun — or agonizing — things about covering baseball in the offseason is taking the words of general managers and trying to determine what they really mean.
Cases in point: Mariners GM Bill Bavasi said last week that it’s “highly, highly unlikely” that he would trade Brandon Morrow, the team’s hard-throwing reliever/starter. Does Bavasi really mean it, or is he bluffing? After all, he didn’t flat-out say he wouldn’t trade Morrow, who is one of the young studs the Baltimore Orioles would love to have in exchange for star starting pitcher Erik Bedard..
Saturday, in the Baltimore Sun, Orioles baseball operations president Andy MacPhail said the likelihood of trading Bedard before the season opener is “very, very low.” But he also finished that sentence with “at the present. But that said, you never know.”
Don’t you love those lines drawn in the sand, only to be wishy-washed away by closing comments that leave the door open to just about anything?
My take is this: Bedard is just as available now as he was at the winter meetings. And if the Mariners want him badly enough, Morrow just might be the piece that swings a deal (along with Adam Jones and others).
The Orioles say they’re now focused on signing Bedard to a contract extension because there’s no urgency to trade him since he won’t be a free agent for two years. But, with no starter on the free-agent market even close to him in quality, this may be the offseason when the Orioles can lure a basket full of prospects via trade.
The Mariners sense a golden opportunity to land a bona-fide No. 1 starter.
After some thin years in the farm system, they now have prospects to trade — Morrow, Jones, catcher Jeff Clement, maybe outfielder Wladimir Balentien, and even reliever George Sherrill has been mentioned.
Bavasi says he plans to be aggressive in acquiring another starting pitcher, and unless he’s got something up his sleeve that will pry Johan Santana from the Twins, don’t be surprised to hear a lot more talkabout Bedard.
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