According to Fox Sports, the Orioles have approached the Rangers about trading for Kevin Millwood, with Fox saying that the motivation for the Rangers to move Millwood (according to a major league source) is so that they can free up money to sign Jermaine Dye.
Bleah. I'd rather have Millwood than Dye, who turns 36 in January, had an EQA of .261 last season, an EQA of .284 in 2008, and an EQA of .262 in 2007. Oh, and who had a .179/.293/.297 line in the second half of last season.
The irony, of course, is that we ridiculed the ChiSox for signing Andruw Jones, but they are letting Jones replace Dye, who is apparently the Rangers' big offseason target. Jones had a .259 EQA in 2009, so it isn't even as if the Rangers would getting an upgrade by adding Dye.
In any case, I'm going to call b.s. on this for the time being. The Rangers might be interested in straight up dumping Millwood to a team that would take on his salary -- unlikely, but possibly -- but I can't imagine that they'd want to do that so that they could sign Dye.
Of course, this is the organization that, with John Hart and Buck Showalter running things, was desperate to get Alex Rodriguez out of town so that they could spend the savings on Sidney Ponson and Rich Aurilia 6 years ago.
But still, I just don't buy this. I've said before that one would hope this organization learned after 2004 how bad an idea it is not to try to move to capitalize on a big season, and moving Millwood to sign Dye would make signing Richard Hidalgo and Pedro Astacio (the big additions for the 2005 season) appear inspired.
I find it hard to believe that this report has much more basis in reality than the "Marco Scutaro as Ranger third baseman" story.