Written by Paul Cousineau

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Certainly by know, you've seen or heard the report that the Nationals have had “conversations” with the Tribe regarding Grady and Fausto...and truthfully, I feel like I've addressed both situations to the point that I could recite their contract stipulations in my sleep. Nevertheless, let's take a look at the origin of that rumor and see how this looks like a big game of telephone as the text in the original story is that a “big league scout tells me he'd heard some "conversations" had taken place between the Nats and the Indians about starting pitcher Fausto Carmona and outfielder Grady Sizemore.”

 

So wait, let me catch up....a big league scout has “heard some 'conversations' had taken place” but has no direct knowledge of them, passed it along to this writer who connects some dots himself because the premise of the report is that “one pretty consistent source tells me that the Nationals are working on 'a number' of other trades, though didn't have enough specifics to flesh anything out.”

 

Sounds like a pretty big leap from the Nationals working on a number of trades with no “specifics to flesh anything out” to something that a scout told him that the scout had “heard some 'conversations' had taken place between the Nats and the Indians”...

 

Maybe there's fire to this smoke, but isn't this what happens in the off-season with teams talking about potential deals for specific players and seeing if they can get packages to line up?

 

As has been stated far too many times, the attractiveness of Carmona's deal makes him a valuable asset to the Indians going forward and any trade for Sizemore means that the club option becomes a player option. Let's say the Nats acquired Grady and found out that his knee is still a mess or that he simply isn't the same player he was prior to 2009...that doesn't matter to Grady and his agent, who would certainly exercise that $9M option for 2012 and whistle all the way to the bank.

 

Maybe the Tribe can get someone to overpay for either of these players and I wouldn't be all that opposed to dealing either depending upon the return (although it would be akin to dropping napalm on the PR crater at the corner of Carnegie and Ontario in terms of public perception), but this “rumor” strikes me as a convoluted game of telephone gone crazy in the world of Twitter and internet page hits.