Boston offered Victor Martinez to Tampa Bay for Carl Crawford before the 2010 season, according to Tom Verducci of SI.com. Though the Rays were open to the deal, they told the Red Sox they’d have to pursue other trades to make the swap work. Tampa Bay’s secondary moves fell through, so Crawford and Martinez stayed put.
The Red Sox weren't the only AL East team with interest in Crawford, but they showed considerably more interest than the Yankees. Crawford told Rob Bradford of WEEI.com that he doesn't think the Yankees were seriously interested in his services last winter when he hit free agency. “If the Yankees want somebody they go out and get them, don’t they?,” Crawford asked. Cliff Lee notwithstanding, he has a point.
Wow, thats pretty crazy, I wonder what the other deal was.
This doesnt make sense cuz who would have been the Sox catcher unless they had a FA or trade contingency plan! Still kinda ironic how things turned out after the fact!
mike cameron signed on december 14th, so this all must have taken place before then – likely during the winter meetings. that would have given them some time to acquire a stopgap catcher
It wasn’t like TB was going to lock up V-Mart to an expensive contract as well. Certainly a head scratcher.
well it sounds like TB thought they might be able to flip him for someone else
There may have been some other players involved in the deal…Maybe Navarro or Shoppach??
This is not an example of irony.
Of course this is ironic! We still ended up essentially swapping Crawford for VMart as we don’t sign one unless we let the other go to Detroit! Hence, irony as we still got one while losing the other anyways!
That’s not irony, that’s an amusing coincidence. There is absolutely nothing ironic about it.
Alannis Morrissette agrees with me!
The sox pretended to want to trade for Crawford when in, in fact, they planned on signing him as a free agent all along! Isn’t it ironic, dont ya think?
I imagine there are more of these “deals” that were offered by other teams around the league, but don’t get any attention since they never happened.
No way this would have been a 1-for-1 swap. CC was picked up with a $10m club option for ’10 season and VMart was picked up with a $7m club option for ’10. Rays were in there last year of contention and would not sacrifice a $3m payroll cut to give up a top 15 player in the league. I understand the other options the Rays had at OF were much better than the alternatives at C but still dont think it makes up the difference. Prospects would have to have been included.
Of course it wouldn’t have been a one-for-one swap. That’s why the Rays said no.
That doesn’t make any sense, you said they were in contention and would not give up Crawford. But then you said they would need prospects. How would that help them if they were in contention?
Slow news day, eh?
You mean a story about a trade that didn’t happen over a year ago isn’t news?
Meanwhile, in baseball news not involving Boston or New York…
Meanwhile, Dodgers Sign Randy Keisler
you know this site doesn’t make the news right? They just report it. Because there’s a lot more media covering NY and Boston, there are a lot more stories about them.
Nope, they just ignore or pass over much of the rest.
…so…if Martinez for Crawford is one deal…what’s the other?
Bowden, Lowrie, Dusty Brown, and John Papelbon for Longoria and Carl Crawford?
Nope, they are just grossly over-covered. Every trivial tidbit from these two cities is reported as though it was important to all of baseball. This only confirms the self-importance the fans in those cities already feel about themselves, but it would be a big mistake to believe that it confers any actual interest on anybody else’s part.
That of course is just insulting. Believe it or not, lots of people not in Boston or New York care about baseball, but I guess you’ve been hearing about your own importance for so long you believe your own hype. It might help if MLBTR had even one writer in the western time zone. They don’t, which is why the coverage is so out of balance — not because people out here don’t care.
Aren’t you the person who just tried to explain away the under-coverage all the other teams by telling me that “most of the people who care about baseball are Red Sox and Yankee fans”? Four out of five of the recent posts were about Boston and New York, including this one about a trade that didn’t happen over a year ago and the very exciting developments in the race for Yankees backup catcher.
I’ve lived on both coasts, so I know what you claim to be a fact is not even remotely accurate. A glance at the attendance figures for any given year might help you see your error. A bias is not correlation, it’s causation.
take Sean Rodriguez as a throw-in.