Say hey, baseball: Rangers won't trade for Cole Hamels

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The Rangers probably need pitching if they are to continue to compete in the AL West and AL as a whole. That pitching apparently won't come in the form of Cole Hamels, though, as a Rangers' source told T.R. Sullivan of MLB.com that "If we were going to do that trade, we would have already done it by now." That's a bit strange, considering that the Rangers have been connected to Hamels for months -- with rumors at their most intense around the time ace Yu Darvish underwent Tommy John surgery -- but also makes a whole lot of sense simply because Texas hasn't completed a trade for the Phillies' top trade chip.

Just who is going to trade for Hamels is unclear. The Red Sox seem interested in less expensive pitchers under team control, likely with the hope being that Clay Buchholz can continue looking like this dominant version of Clay Buchholz over the next couple of years where he has relatively cheap team options. The Dodgers might be intrigued, since Hamels would cost them in prospects but far less in dollars and years then the inevitable extension for Zack Greinke would -- with that being said, David Price or Johnny Cueto will only cost them a draft pick and money, so even they might not be in a rush to send kids to the Phillies. Could it be the Yankees? The Blue Jays have the prospects but not the money. The Orioles have the prospects and the money but don't tend to spend big money on pitchers. So, who?

We'll know the answer within the next two weeks unless something has gone terribly wrong in the Phillies' front office. We do know, though, as much as we can know anything based on rumors, that we can count the Rangers out of a potential Hamels' trade.

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