No matter how many times the Mariners make it incredibly clear that they aren’t going to trade their 25-year-old Cy Young winner who’s signed through 2014 the speculation about Felix Hernandez deals doesn’t seem to stop, but perhaps this at least will cause it to die down for a while.
Jon Paul Morosi of FOXSports.com has learned eight of the 10 teams on Hernandez’s no-trade list: Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, Cubs, Angels, Dodgers, Rangers, Phillies.
Many people assume that players would include teams like the Pirates or Royals on their no-trade lists, but in reality those types of teams are almost never going to actually trade for a superstar player with a big contract anyway. Hernandez including the Pirates on his no-trade list would just be wasting one of the 10 spots, so instead of listing where he’d most like to avoid going he’s instead listing most of the highest-payroll teams.
In fact, of the eight teams Morosi knows about only the Rangers didn’t have one of the 12 highest payrolls in 2010. Hernandez is blocking a trade to the teams he believes are most likely to actually try to swing a deal for him, not the teams he most wants to avoid playing for (although certainly there might be some overlap).
Now can we maybe wait a couple months before there’s another batch of “Will the Mariners trade Felix Hernandez?” columns?
