Maine Offered To A's For Hudson?
I was all set to point out that Billy Beane has indeed had previous interest in John Maine, but MetsBlog and a lot of message boards beat me to the punch. That's what I get for taking the afternoon off.
For what it's worth, I did find this Peter Gammons article from December of 2004 mentioning that Maine was offered by the Orioles for Tim Hudson along with Erik Bedard and Hayden Penn. Man, why didn't Billy Beane take that offer? That's 3/5 of a starting rotation right there.
I am pretty sure it has to do with the issue of Beane not wanting to give a window to the O's for fear that an agreement would not be reached.
Posted by: | January 21, 2006 at 08:54 PM
That trade didn't go through because the Orioles were not allowed a 72 hour window to negotiate with Hudson. They weren't willing to give up that much talent without locking up Hudson for more than one season.
Posted by: Ben Wolf | January 21, 2006 at 10:19 PM
Beane okayed that deal. The Os were the ones who nixed it. And just because Beane okayed a deal involving Maine does not necessarily mean that he's infatuated (or even likes) him particularly. i think most would agree that much of the value in that trade is in Penn and Bedard by a large margin. That's like suggesting that the Diamondbacks traded for Sexson a few years ago because they were obsessed with Shane Nance.
Posted by: Jonathan | January 21, 2006 at 10:38 PM
Lots of talk about Benson to the O's reopens the door on Abreu for Bedard and Gibbons.
Posted by: guru | January 21, 2006 at 11:48 PM
http://redsox.bostonherald.com/redSox/view.bg?articleid=122417
Got any rumors with this? Seems legit. I'm assuming that the Red Sox got someone else too...
Posted by: Mike | January 22, 2006 at 12:05 AM
Jason Michaels for either Betancourt or Rhodes is also mentioned in the Herald.
Posted by: xxx | January 22, 2006 at 12:40 AM
"Lots of talk about Benson to the O's reopens the door on Abreu for Bedard and Gibbons."
Not really. The Os had maybe only 4 ML starters before this trade. It could re-open such talks if the Os already had 5 starters to begin with, but, by adding Benson, they really are addressing a need they've had since they released Ponson. I can't see an addition of Benson suddenly making any of their starters seem expendable. They have a hard enough time attracting FAs who shun them lately, which might be why they have been been extremely unwilling to deal any starter of theirs.
Posted by: Jonathan | January 22, 2006 at 12:53 AM
It better be Betancourt, we dont need another journeyman lefty, we have one of those in Cormier.
Posted by: James | January 22, 2006 at 12:55 AM
The deal they should have done was Hudson for Haren, Reyes and Barton. That would have been a steal.
That is the Mulder deal but with Reyes instead of Calero, and Reyes OWNS.
Posted by: Zonis | January 22, 2006 at 10:30 AM
Is there another source other than Peter Gammons, who gets things wrong, that says the O's offered their 3 best pitching prospects at the time? That doesn't seem like anything the O's would do. It would seem to me that Gammons was embellishing once again. Maybe Oakland could have had Bedard and either Maine or Penn, but I highly doubt the O's offered all 3.
And this does free up a possible Bedard trade. I'm not saying I would recommend it, but this would now give them a top 4 of Benson/Cabrera/Chen/Lopez with Penn/DuBose/free agent fighting for the 5th spot.
Posted by: BigBCherney | January 22, 2006 at 01:33 PM
Dubose will probably never pitch in the MLs again. Or at least not for the Os. They have way too many better SP prospects who are going to be about ready pretty soon. I think you'll see their minor league All-Stars Loewen and/or James Johnson before you see Dubose.
Posted by: Jonathan | January 22, 2006 at 08:24 PM