I was reading through last week's SI with Alfonso Soriano on the cover and I came to his article. About halfway through the article, I read something that caught my eye. The article said that before last season the Yankees turned down a deal that would have netted them Jim Edmonds for Soriano and a couple of prospects. They also turned down a deal that would have given them Sosa for Soriano and prospects. The article went on to say that the Yankees had agreed to a deal with the Astros to send Soriano and Ted Lilly to Houston for Moises Alou. Before the trade was to be announced, Alou exercised his no-trade clause and blocked the deal. Damn Alou!
That's got to be a joke. NY would have never traded Soriano last year for Alou. Who would have played 2B for them? Not Knoblauch...
That was in 2000, not 2001...and it was for real. Soriano has exceeded all expectations for him this year, so there was no way the Yankees thought he could have done this (thus, if they would have known this...they wouldn't have offered that trade). The Astros were strugglin, Alou was expendable...but ah well, we win the div. in 2001 w/ Alou, and Soriano will be a future HOFer.
I believe it. Soriano has far surpassed expectations. Of course, is Soriano a natural SS? If not, he'd be behind Biggio anyway.
I don't think Soriano is a natural SS, though I'm probably wrong. I think he was coming up as a CF because one of the reasons the astros wanted him was to be their future CF. That would have been sweet though. For Alou, he gets to play for a winner instead of the Cubs. For the Stros, we get a young talent like Soriano and a good young pitcher like Lilly.
Soriano was originally a SS coming through the minor league system. Both him and D'angelo Jimenez (now with San Diego) were the yankees top SS prospects. They converted him to 2B because of some guy in their organization named Derek Jeter.
Yeah, your right, but I'm pretty sure the Astros wanted to convert him to CF. I remember reading somewhere that he was happy he didn't get traded because he didn't want to play in the outfield.