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With time slowly ticking towards Saturday afternoon's trade deadline, the Roy Oswalt saga continues to turn. Oswalt told the Houston Chronicle Monday that he wouldn't be opposed to a trade to the East Coast, presumably referencing the Philadelphia Phillies. That statement came shortly after the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's story earlier today in which Cardinals' GM John Mozeliak described an Oswalt deal as "certainly not imminent" for his team.
One could certainly take those statements at face value and assume that once Oswalt realized that the Cardinals were unlikely to put together a package to the Astros' liking, he decided that any contending team would be a better team to spend the end of the summer with than the Astros.
Of course, it's always best to take public statements with a grain of salt at this time of year.
It's also possible that Mozeliak was trying to publicly put some pressure on the Astros to accept his offer for Oswalt Monday morning, thinking that his team is one of the few that the pitcher will accept a trade to. And that in response, Oswalt wants Mozeliak to know, or at least think, that he's not the only horse in this race.
Or there could be even more factors in play that we don't even know about at the moment. Five days may not seem like a lot, but there's plenty of time for anything to happen before the deadline passes.
This is all an issue, of course, because of Oswalt's contract, which includes a $16 million payday in 2011, a $16 million club option for 2012 with a $2 million buyout, and a full no-trade clause which obviously limits the teams to which the right-hander could be traded.
On the one hand, he's probably the most sought-after pitcher left on the trade market. On the other, whoever ends up with him is going to feel like they've done the Astros a huge favor by taking the massive contract of a soon-to-be 33-year-old pitcher off of their hands.
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