Orange County Register

Major League Baseball’s official website reports _ well, not exactly reports _ that Mark Teixeira would like to play baseball in Washington next year.

A person “familiar with Teixeira’s thinking” told Bill Ladson, who reports on the Nationals for MLB.com, that Teixeira likes the idea of playing for the cellar-dwelling Nats. Teixeira is from Baltimore, where many of his closest friends still live, so presumably he’d be warm to the Orioles as well.

There’s no telling who this source is. It very well could be someone familiar with Scott Boras’ thinking. Like Boras, for example.

The Yankees don’t seem as strong a contender for Teixeira because they traded for first baseman Nick Swisher and are aiming for starting pitching.

The source also says Teixeira wants more money than what Miguel Cabrera for Detroit. He should get it. Cabrera, on his way to DH-dom, got $153 million for eight years. Teixeira is a great first baseman and more versatile hitter, and that figure would be a near-bargain, although that’s like saying we’re in high cotton because we’re only paying $2.40 a gallon.

The Angels, of course, need Teixeira more than anybody does, because they’re not a lock to sign Vladimir Guerrero after 2009 and they’re going to need some power.

Their home run hope in the minors is Mark Trumbo, but now he risks severe emotional trauma after reading on this blog that he is “a bit of a disappointment” because of his relatively low OBP.

Trumbo will be crushed to know that Sam Miller, our correspondent from Planet VORP, thinks so little of him.

Down here on earth, the Angels haven’t expressed any disappointment about Trumbo and, in fact, were pretty excited about his six home runs in 25 games for Double-A Arkansas and his 28 doubles, 26 homers and .553 slugging percentage for Rancho Cucamonga.

What they really liked was Trumbo’s willingness to shave his strikeouts down to 67, in 408 Class A at bats. He suffered a bit of a relapse at Arkansas, but the Angels thought he made progress.

But then, the Angels were evaluating him based on in-person reports. So what do they know?

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.