? It’s unclear whether there was anything to the “Jose Bautista for Joey Votto trade rumor” (the what now?)

bautista is cost controlled until 2015 (making 14 million every year from next until then), whereas votto comes up for a new contract after 2013, and even in 2013, he'll be pulling a $17MM salary.

? (according to this and Robo’s recent tweets) Rockies wanted Josh Reddick, Felix Doubront, Will Middlebrooks, Kyle Weiland and Ryan Lavarnway for Ubaldo Jimenez and Seth Smith

i'd rather have the cleveland deal. that is a lot of near-ML ready talent, but noone on there touches pomeranz, and i'd probably take alex white as the next best player in the two offers.

? Mets wanted one of Robbie Erlin or Joe Wieland from Rangers for Carlos Beltran; Rangers declined and later put them in the Mike Adams trade

adams is under contract for next year, whereas beltran will be a free agent.

i think the timing was probably more of an issue there, though. the mets pulled the trigger on beltran before anything else happened, but the adams deal happened closer to the deadline, where TEX may have felt more pressure to do something.

I suspect the Rangers were hoping to find a way to get both Beltran and Adams but couldn't make it happen.

I'm with you on the Cleveland/Boston options of the Ubaldo deal. There is probably more depth in the Sox offer but the best player (probably best two) are in the Cleveland deal. I think GMs get too worked up about the back end of trades. That's what I liked about the Beltran deal for the Mets. Rather than trade him for 3 or 4 "maybes" they just got the best player they could.

Really? I thought that sounded like ripping off the Red Sox. Guess I listen to too many Sox fans. ;)

It’s unclear whether there was anything to the “Jose Bautista for Joey Votto trade rumor” (the what now?)

The rumor started with a Reds beat writer, who cited that a friend "in baseball" of one of his readers. It has zero merit.