The Angels won the Zack Greinke sweepstakes last night, acquiring the former Cy Young Award winner in exchange for prospects Jean Segura, John Hellweg, and Ariel Pena. We've already seen some reactions to the trade as well as a breakdown of its impact on the Rangers, but here are some more details on the pursuit of the right-hander…
- Righties Justin Grimm and Cody Buckel were the top pieces in the Rangers offer, according to Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports (on Twitter). The Brewers valued a young shortstop and wanted Martin Perez to compensate.
- Rosenthal also hears that the Angels' late inclusion of Pena in their offer swung things in their favor (Twitter link).
- White Sox GM Kenny Williams "worked his tail off" to land Greinke according to Rosenthal (on Twitter), even trying to include a third team before failing to find a match.
- MLB.com's Jesse Sanchez reports (on Twitter) that the Nationals expressed interest in Greinke, perhaps in preparation for Stephen Strasburg's eventual shutdown. The Braves were also in the mix.
the rangers said they do not consider greinke of value. yet they signed already injured oswalt, earlier. makes no sense. they will pay in the playoffs.
They considered him valuable, just not to the value of Hammels, Lee, or Johnson. Also with Oswalt, they were picking up a guy with good playoff experience that still had good baseball left in him without giving up any prospects. Oswalt was a low risk move. Greinke, not as much.
Roy Oswalt has been injury prone for sometime. And with Colby Lewis going down, the Rangers needed to pick up pitching. Yu Darvish cannot win the Division, by himself.
Sour grapes from the Rangers, talking about how they really didn’t want Greinke, how he’s not worth it. Hilarious.
This is dumb. Rangers could have easily topped the package that the Angels offered to the Brewers. They didn’t even have to include Profar or Olt, Martin Perez would have sealed the deal. The Rangers simply did not want Greinke enough to surrender any one of those guys. While this may have been a mistake on the part of the Rangers (as Greinke went to their division rival), this is by no means sour grape.
Rangers and sour grapes? That’s out of character!
Well, if Kenny couldn’t land Grienke, no way are the Sox getting Johnson/Shields/Garza/etc. It’s depressing to know the farm system is that ridiculous.