The Xavier Nady rumors, it seems, never end.
On Thursday, I noted that the Yanks are listening to offers for Nady, and Joe talked about trading Nady for Aaron Harang. On Wednesday, the rumor du jour concerned Randy Winn. While a little over a week 55 percent of RAB voters said don’t trade Nady, his name just keeps on popping up in trade rumors.
Today, we have both the Giants and Pirates involved in various talks over Xavier Nady. The first story comes to us via The Splash, Henry Schulman’s San Francisco Chronicle-hosted Giants blog. He writes, “I’ve been told by a good source that Yankees GM Brian Cashman wants to keep Swisher to replace Bobby Abreu in right field and deal Nady, who becomes a free agent after the 2009 season.”
Schulman goes on to speculate that the Giants could be interested. However, he’s just guessing and has no further information concerning the team’s interest.
Meanwhile, the Pirates seem to be talking Nady and Swisher with the Yanks. Dejan Kovacevic reports:
The Pirates have had trade talks with the New York Yankees regarding outfielders Nick Swisher and Xavier Nady, one high-level source said today, but there is little cause to expect a deal involving either coming to Pittsburgh.
In Swisher’s case, he is owed $22 million the next three years and is coming off a down season in which he batted .219 with 24 home runs and 69 RBIs. Moreover, the Yankees are seeking pitching, the Pirates’ most precious commodity, so the match is poor. The source described the chance of a Swisher deal being done as “a long shot.”
A Nady deal is seen as even less likely, and the talks on that front have been no more than cursory. The primary reason is that the Yankees never could get back as much as they gave up for Nady and reliever Damaso Marte in the teams’ July 26 trade — outfield prospect Jose Tabata and starters pitchers Jeff Karstens, Ross Ohlendorf and Daniel McCutchen — and that could make for an awkward set of circumstances.
So we have some conflicting information, and some sense of what the Yankees are expecting. It’s worth noting that the Kovacevic is the latter of the two. Perhaps the Yanks are willing to listen on Swisher even if they would rather keep them. A Front Office conducting its due diligence would be better served hearing everything another GM has to say about any player.
Meanwhile, I’m not sure I agree with Kovacevic. If the Yanks are, as Schulman says, so keen on moving Nady, they may view him as the lesser of the two pieces from last summer’s trade. They seem to recognize that Nady had something of a career year last year, and Brian Cashman, in looking to move Nady, seems to be betting on the belief that Nady won’t duplicate his 2008 number. He wants a decent package for Nady and needs to replace some of the parts they sent to Pittsburgh last year. It is unreasonable to expect to get a full return though.
Either way, these talks were very cursory, and at the risk of sounding like a broken RAB record, I still predict Nady to be with the team come April.
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