Mike and the Mad Dog: Yankees trying to get Rowand in three-team trade

[DrBox]

from what i've been hearing the third team may be the Florida Marlins, and the whole deal is solely based on Paul Konerko's final destination. If Konerko leaves it would be Marlins sending Mike Lowell to the yankees for Cap reasons, and the yankees who ship Lowell to the whitesox and eat 5 million of his contract along with Matt DeSalvo, RHP. To acuire Lowell we would only need to send a couple low level minor leaguers to the marlins because they just want to rid themselves of his contract

Final deal would look like this
Yankees get Aaron Rowand
WhiteSox get Mike Lowell and Matt DeSalvo, RHP
Marlins get Melky Cabrera and Jeff Marquez, RHP

There is little chance that the Sox are trading Rowand for a stiff like Mike Lowell. What little chance there is exists only if we DO sign Konerko - because if we don't, we'll go after an elite hitter; if we do resign Konerko, we still need another hitter - if Lowell is the best Williams can do, we may settle. We already rejected Lowell as part of the putative AJ Burnett trade last July.

The Phillies are also a possiblity: they need a CF and they have 2 high-priced hitters who are rumored to be on the block.

A 3-way with the Brewers seems possible too, as they need starters and yall may have an excess of passable starters.

Ozzie isn't confident in Marte - for good reason this year, but he has been our best reliever if you look at the last 4 years in aggretate. Marte is also more than a situational lefty (when he's on his game) - he can get righties out. Eyre, on the other hand, is basically a situational lefty, and the price the Cubs paid was way to high, imv.

BTW - this is a great board. Nothing like talking baseball with Yankee fans.

[Fabien Brandy]

Halsey's a few months younger than DeSalvo and already has 192 major league innings under his belt. I like DeSalvo but the law of averages in terms of prospects means that he'll have to be lucky to reach that.