Trade Rumors Swirl around L.A. and Texas

Evan Grant of he Dallas Morning News feels strongly that a trade between the Dodgers and Rangers may be in the works. Texas has fallen 16 games behind the leader in the American League Central Division and seemingly are looking at dumping salary in the form of first baseman Mark Teixeira and -- gasp -- closer Eric Gagne.

"Come this time next month," he writes, " if the Rangers execute things exactly as they'd like, Mark Teixeira will be in Dodgers blue. Eric Gagne or Akinori Otsuka, too. And the Rangers? They'll get the bounty of talent they need to accelerate their rebuilding plan. How about James Loney to replace Teixeira at first base? Chad Billingsley to slide into the rotation? Highland Park's left-handed whiz kid Clayton Kershaw to throw into the minor league system?"

According to Grant, the Dodgers have been busy scouting the Rangers. " It's almost impossible to go to a Rangers game these days and not run into a different Dodgers scout," he writes.

In his estimation, the fact that Don Welke worked in the Dodgers organization and knows the system could work in the Rangers favor.

Grant noted that Teixeira's agent, Scott Boras, has season tickets at Dodger Stadium and "that would make it that much easier for Boras to negotiate a long-term deal with LA," Grant says.

He apparently missed the lengthy negotiations with Luke Hochever, a Boras client, after the Dodgers made their first draft choice in 2005. The offers and counter-offers, hiring a different agent and then dumping him, and eventually the Dodgers abandoned any attempt to sign the pitcher, allowing him to sit our a season and then return and sign with Kansas City the next year. is almost legend.

So far, Dodger GM Ned Colletti has avoided trading any of the top Dodger prospects, as did Kevin Malone and Dan Evans before him.

Now that the club's minor league talent tree has begun to bear delicious fruit (read Billingsley, Loney, Kemp, Martin, Abreu and Kuo), one would hope that Colletti avoids the temptation of trading the Dodgers' tomorrow for today.