Mets The Favorites For Jay Bruce

The non-waiver trade deadline is just under nine hours away, and rumors/transactions figure to be flying around quickly today. Reds outfielder Jay Bruce remains one of the likeliest candidates to be dealt between now and the 4pm ET deadline. As of Sunday, the Giants were said to be making a “strong push” for Bruce, who is also said to be a prime target of the Mets. Bruce has also drawn interest from the Indians, Dodgers and Rangers, among others, over the past few days, and the Rays have at times been mentioned as a possible factor in three-team trade scenarios involving Bruce.

We’ll keep track of all the day’s Bruce rumors here in this post…

• Morosi now tweets that the Mets and Reds have made progress on a deal involving Bruce.
• Yahoo’s Jeff Passan tweets that the Mets are the favorites to land Bruce, but the Rangers and Giants are still in. Talks could stretch into the afternoon, he notes.

Earlier Updates

• Jon Paul Morosi of FOX Sports/MLB.com tweets that the Mets remain in active talks with the Reds as of Monday morning. ESPN’s Jayson Stark also tweets that conversations with the Mets remain active, while talks with the Giants and Dodgers are currently in “slow mo.”
• Heyman tweets that the Mets don’t seem to have heard anything on Bruce this morning (Twitter link). He also tweets that the Giants haven’t heard anything about Bruce being dealt this morning.
• USA Today’s Bob Nightengale tweets that the Reds have “found a match” for a Bruce trade and expects Cincinnati to trade Bruce to a National League club this morning. That team is not the Dodgers, according to Nightengale. The Giants and Mets are the two non-Dodgers NL clubs that have been most heavily linked to Bruce in the past day or two.
• Jon Heyman of FanRag Sports tweets the Giants, Mets, Indians and others have been in on Bruce recently. Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports, meanwhile, lists the Giants, Dodgers, Mets, Rangers and Blue Jays all as teams that still have some interest in Bruce as of Monday morning.