Jon Heyman on the Pirates’ potential pursuit – or not of Cubs first baseman Carlos Pena:
#pirates inquired on carlos pena, but sense is #cubs werent motivated to move him. unsure d. lee is upgrade.
Um, okey-dokey. The Cubs are a million games out of first place and have no particular use for Pena anymore, but hey, whatever.
Good thing the deadline is on Sunday – I’m beginning to get a little rumor-phobic. A few days ago we heard that it was the Pirates who had lost interest in a Pena trade. But before that, they had been scouting him for a month, although nobody really liked him too much. Nonetheless, the Cubs were just about certain to move him. All of this has been reported in the past five days.
Clearly, we’ve reached a point where the signal-to-noise ratio has become microscopic. If this went on for another week, we’d probably be hearing reports that the Cubs were considering trading Pena to the Orix Buffaloes; that the Pirates were considering infiltrating Wrigley Field, kidnapping Pena and holding him for ransom; that Pena was considering quitting baseball to become an astronaut; and that the Oakland Athletics were considering retiring his number. The string of rumors that currently surround Pena collectively make about as much sense as all of that does.