Jermaine Dye Trade Happens, and Then Doesn't

Sox outfielder rumored to Reds before GM squashes deal

Currently, we baseball fans are stuck in a pretty interminable period. We're just out of the season, which, for all of its heartbreak, is still The Season -- it's chock so full of baseball you almost get sick of it -- but we're not yet to the optimism and rebirth of spring training. We're stuck in the midst of no-baseball no-man's-land, and boy, is it cold.

The dreariness forces us to focus on the one redeeming aspect of the baseball offseason: the Hot Stove. Trades and signings, rumors and innuendo -- it's hollow, but at the very least, it's something.

Anyway, that's enough rhapsodizing. The real reason we're here is that the fun little rumors-that-might-not-be-true train stopped at 95th and Sox yesterday, in which the White Sox were supposedly angling to send outfielder Jemaine Dye to the Cincinnati Reds for pitcher Homer Bailey. According to MLB Trade Rumors, as complete a compendium of Dye stories as you'll fine, a deal was going to be announced as soon as this week before someone in the White Sox front office squashed it, saying the Sox wanted more than just Bailey. Something seemed afoot, even if the two sides never reached an agreement.

Then, just three hours later, Reds GM Walt Jocketty claimed the report was entirely false, saying the Sox and the Reds hadn't talked since Thanksgiving. Which makes them just like you and your parents!

Maybe the trade was never set to happen; maybe it was all but finished. We don't really know. But we do know that Jermaine Dye's name is fully out there, and that it's no secret the White Sox want to trade him for something young, something cheap, and something that's going to more fully fit their idea of a resurgent young core. If this trade doesn't happen, another one soon will.

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