Evan Grant has a blog entry about Kris Benson, whom he suggests may be the best trade option out there for the Rangers if they are trying to land starting pitching.
He also has this little warning, though:
And now for the hard question: You can toss around Kevin Mench, Laynce Nix, even John Danks and Joaquin Arias all you want, but if teams are willing to deal with the Rangers, they are first going to ask for Ian Kinsler or Gerald Laird. It's going to be up to the Rangers to get a deal done without including either of them.
Update [2006-7-14 15:10:15 by Adam J. Morris]: -- I just wanted to mention something, since Grant is getting jumped on for the comments about Kinsler and Laird. I don't read this as Grant saying that Kinsler and/or Laird should be traded for Kris Benson, or any other pitcher. I don't think he's saying that those guys are going to have to necessarily be dealt to get a deal done.
I think what he is saying, though, are that those are the two guys that other teams are likely to target, because they are good, young, cheap, player premium defensive positions, and are under team control for a while. And Laird isn't even starting for the Rangers right now, while Kinsler could, hypothetically, be replaced by Mark DeRosa at second base.
It is really no different than when the Mets were calling around last year, and everyone wanted Lastings Milledge. Or the Twins, with teams coming after Francisco Liriano. Teams aren't going to ask for Mike Young or Mark Teixeira from the Rangers, just like they weren't going to ask for, say, Carlos Beltran or David Wright from the Mets last year. But Laird and Kinsler are two guys who would have a lot of trade value, and that other teams would probably focus in on as being potentially available.