Let's dive in:
- KC Star (Dutton): Arod's Injury Fuels Rumors of Yankee's Interest in Teahen.
Dutton's story includes this nugget:
Royals officials, for now, are brushing off the speculation, and general manager Dayton Moore has long maintained that Teahen is more valuable now to the club than in previous years because of his versatility.
“What I’m hoping,” one Royals official said, “is they sign (second baseman Mark) Grudzielanek. That way, we get a (compensatory) draft pick.”
- Rotoworld: Yanks Could Be Interested in Teahen
- Kaegel: Royals Not Talking Teahen with Yanks
- MLB.com: Cashman Downplays Teahen Rumor
- Star Ledger: Teahen Listed as a Possible Option
- NY Post: Teahen listed as a long-term utility man solution in random column
- NY Post: Random story suggesting Yankees will stick with Ransom
- SI.com: Story discussing impact of Arod absence which makes no mention of Teahen
As far as I can tell, the arch of the rumor is trending downward, as I found quite a few stories about Rodriguez and the Yankees which made no mention of Teahen at all. There was an initial buzz regarding Teahen, and when the possibility made it into two Dutton stories, which then hit Rotoworld and MLBTR, it lit a fire across the blogosphere. But beyond that, there's really nothing there, aside from a few shadings within some of the quotes Dutton pulled. Probably 65% of this rumor is simply the way the Yankees are covered and thought about, both by media members and casual fans (i.e. the thousand bloggers and message boarders who are linking these stories everywhere).
Issues in play, intermingled with my own, uninformed, two-cent analysis:
- How good is Teahen at third at this point? Unless the Yankees have a perception that he's an average to above average player at the hot corner, he may not be a better short-term option than Esteban German.
- How much do you believe Moore's oft-stated he means more to us than anybody else line? Has this ever really made much sense?
- Tangled up in this, of course, is that you have to decide what Moore really thinks of Teahen, which no one really knows.
- Is Teahen's trade value ever going to be higher? Does Moore try to seize that leverage and really bleed the Yankees? And if he does so, will he end up killing a possible trade, and convincing the Yankees to go with a lesser (presumably) solution.