The latest from Jayson Stark:
The deadline clock is ticking louder by the hour. The Rangers continue to call around, trying to stoke the market. But sooner or later -- and we'd bet sooner -- our hunch is that Teixeira is going to end up exactly where most people have been predicting he'd end up: in Atlanta. Reports of the Diamondbacks and Dodgers charging back in over the weekend appear to have been overstated. The Angels, meanwhile, haven't budged since they tweaked their offer late last week to include pitcher Joe Saunders in addition to Casey Kotchman. And the Braves have been telling other clubs they think they've made a good enough offer, and they shouldn't have to sweeten it. The buzz Sunday was that the names of Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Elvis Andrus have been settled on in the Atlanta package -- but there's a chance the teams could agree on either a different pitching prospect than the much-discussed Matt Harrison or decide the third player should be a pitcher to be named later. So now it's time for the Rangers to close this deal, because yet another front-office man who is close to Braves GM John Schuerholz predicted Sunday that Schuerholz won't wait much longer, saying: "This is just my gut feel, from knowing John for so long. But I'll be very surprised if he lets this thing get past midday Monday. Midday on Monday leaves him 24-28 hours to go complete another deal, using one or more of the same players. And I can just about guarantee you he's working on something else." The Angels, on the other hand, don't appear to be pursuing any other deal of consequence. They just want to know whether this one is getting done or not. Most clubs understand why Texas GM Jon Daniels has taken his time on this, to make sure he makes the best trade he can, in what could be the defining moment of his tenure. But by Sunday, other teams' patience with Texas' slow pace on all its potential deals was beginning to disintegrate. An official of one club accused Rangers owner Tom Hicks of "knowing he controls the market -- so he's playing with it like a guy with a remote-control car." Three other teams criticized the Rangers' price on all its players, from Eric Gagne to Joaquin Benoit, using words like "ridiculous" and "unreal." So now that we're down to the last 48 hours, the Rangers will have to prove they meant business and had a plan all along -- or they're going to infuriate their peers even more than Hicks did with A-Rod's $252-million Powerball jackpot, a contract other owners still grumble about. "This," said an executive of one team, "is decision-making time."
Interesting that Tom Hicks, rather than Jon Daniels, seems to be the object of other teams' ire.
That said, I can't say that I have a real issue with Daniels & Co. taking their time on this, and waiting through the weekend to pull the trigger. It isn't as if any deal out there is likely to be pulled off the table in the meantime, and as the deadline gets closer, teams would seem to be more willing to up the ante.
And the situation with the Dodgers would seem to make it even harder to pull the trigger quickly, if, in fact, the Rangers' "Hanley Ramirez" at this deadline, the guy that is their #1 target, is Clayton Kershaw. Will Carroll mentions in his latest Mill update that "the turmoil in the front office is continuing," and Daniels probably wants to see if that situation gets resolved before dealing Teixeira to another team.
My gut tells me that the Atlanta deal is going to go down tomorrow...but we shall see...
