From the theater of the insane.....
When you wish a upon a star … don’t expect it to come true. That’s what I’m telling myself now and telling you before the crazy tweets come flying at me.
Late in September as the Yankees hurtled toward elimination and thoughts shifted towards 2017, I had a scout tell me there was a trade the Yankees had to make and that he could see it happening.
The target? Mike Trout.
Yes, that Mike Trout. The best player in baseball over the last five years, still only 25 years old.
The reasons this scout told me to look out for this deal? There are plenty.
The basis of it comes from the big restock the Yankees pulled off with the Aroldis Chapman and Andrew Miller deals last July, on top of what had already become one of the more talent-rich systems in the game. The Yankees now had “an army of prospects,” according to this scout.
“You don’t accumulate all those prospects with the intent of keeping them all,” the scout told me. “They have value and it makes complete sense to spin off four of five of them for Trout.”
Trading prospects for the biggest star in the game?
“It’s very much a Yankees kind of move and makes too much sense for them,” he told me.
The Yankees could then trade Brett Gardner, move Jacoby Ellsbury to left and Trout, who doesn’t turn 26 until next August, could man center field and become the leader of the Baby Bombers.
The scout went on to state that the Angels have maybe the worst farm system in baseball and this was a way to inject talent into their system immediately.
The kicker to this thought was the obvious connection between Yankees general manager Brian Cashman and his former assistant, Billy Eppler, now the Angels’ GM. A move like this could jumpstart a rebuilding effort as Eppler enters his second year with the Angels, who have seen their win total drop from 98 to 85 to 74 over the last three seasons.
“All of that is true,” a GM of another major league team told me. “But that has zero percent chance of happening.”
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2016/11/15/mike-trout-new-york-yankees-los-angeles-angels-sweeny-murti/