There have been off-and-on rumors about the Indians wanting to trade ace Corey Kluber all offseason. There haven’t been any compelling explanations about why they want to trade Kluber, but they still, apparently, are interested in trading him. Welcome to baseball in 2019.
Earlier talks this offseason between the Indians and Reds -- and, alternatively, the Indians and the Padres -- apparently went nowhere. So here’s a new wrinkle: Dennis Lin and Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic are reporting that the Indians, Padres and Reds are talking about Kluber in the context of a potential three-way deal.
Reading all of the tweets and stuff that surround that, it seems that the Reds want Kluber and the Padres want Reds top prospect Nick Senzel. That’s fine as far as it goes, except (a) the Reds really don’t want to part with Senzel; and (b) no one, still, can fully explain what the Indians want out of all of this. They could use Senzel themselves, but those talks are presumably part of what went nowhere with the Reds earlier this offseason and, even if there was still some momentum to all of that, there would be no point in involving the Padres. Again: none of this adds up perfectly. Probably because it’s seemingly driven by a contending team wanting to trade a perennial Cy Young candidate who is under team control at a reasonable rate and that just breaks the model.
Nothing is imminent, say Lin and Rosenthal. Which is probably good for Indians fans who, quite reasonably, probably want to know why the team they root for seem so hell-bent on trading one of the best pitchers in baseball at a time when they should be gearing up to match the Yankees, Red Sox and Astros and attempting to win a World Series which is, you know, the point of baseball.
