Not Much To These Joba-Texas Rumors

George King of The NY Post kickstarted the rumor mill yesterday with this story about the Texas Rangers sending scouts to watch Joba Chamberlain in his latest ST appearance.  The Rangers are woefully thin on bullpen arms right now and the Yankees actually have a bit of a surplus, so it makes sense from Texas' standpoint.  There are more than a few intriguing trade pieces on their side, names like Jurickson Profar and Mike Olt, but I wouldn't read too deeply into this situation.

For starters, Texas isn't trading either of those guys for Joba straight up, and I don't see either team wanting to add players to the deal to turn this into something bigger than Texas looking to fill a need.  Despite his statements to the contrary, Joba is a middle reliever coming off two major surgeries in the final year of team control before hitting free agency.  The Yankees aren't in much of a position to ask for something of real value in return for a trade piece like that, and there isn't much to be gained by trading away a useful piece of their bullpen for a player that doesn't help fill one of their needs.

If the Rangers are willing to talk multi-player deals and include Profar and/or Olt in the talks, then the Yankees should be all ears.  But I'd say this is more Texas just doing their due diligence for the trade deadline.