I recently named the Baltimore Sun’s Jeff Zrebiec as Rumor Royalty for the Orioles. He was kind enough to answer a few questions for the site.
MLBTR: Give us an example of a reasonable trade bounty for a team acquiring Miguel Tejada. Do you think the Orioles are targeting a certain number of players or certain positions? If the acquiring team intended to move him to third base, would this become a problem?
Zrebiec: All indications are that the Orioles are still looking for two high-level prospects for Tejada. I’m not sure they’ll get that now with Tejada’s defensive concerns and declining power numbers, but that could change when Miguel Cabrera is no longer on the market. The Orioles are in desperate need for young position player talent, but president of baseball operations Andy MacPhail has acknowledged that he is in no position to discriminate. He wants to bring in as much young talent as possible this offseason, regardless of position. "We’ll sort it out later," he has said.
Tejada has given conflicting answers in the past about whether he’ll move to 3B. He has made it clear that he’d prefer to stay at shortstop. However, he has also said that he would make the move for a playoff-caliber team. I don’t foresee it being a problem at all. Everybody that knows Miguel insists that all he wants to do is win, and he’ll do what he has to do to make that happen.
