Miami Is Shopping Marcell Ozuna?

I've been reluctant to write about this only because I haven't seen any concrete evidence that Miami is willing to sell. This is the offseason though, the time to dream, so for the sake of this blog post let's say that the Miami Marlins and Jeffrey Loria are willing to sell off a major young piece in Marcell Ozuna, should the Yankees be interested?

I like to keep this blog "PG" so excuse me for this, but HELL YES. Ozuna is a right-handed center fielder that projects to have 30 home run power in his Major League career. Ozuna is just 25-years old and has four years of team control including all of his arbitration years. Why would the Marlins, a team that handed outfielder Giancarlo Stanton a huge contract with a promise to compete for the life of it, want to trade Ozuna? Apparently there is some bad blood between owner Jeffrey Loria and their stud center fielder.

I'm not sure if you guys heard about it or not but the Marlins sent Ozuna down this season with the reasoning that they were hoping the demotion could turn around slumping season. Coincidentally the Marlins could delay his arbitration by a season if Ozuna spent at least five weeks in the minors in 2015 and Ozuna spent six weeks in Triple-A, just to be sure. That's all speculation until the recorded phone call between owner Loria and team president David Samson  hit the internet. SEE HERE for the actual audio but the important piece is below:

Female voice: “Scott Boras is on the line.”

Male voice: “Let me tell ya, tell Boras that his client is getting demoted, and that his client is a fat, [unintelligible] lazy, Dominican fuck.”

Wow if true, and wow if it's about Ozuna. No wonder Scott Boras and Ozuna are unhappy with the Marlins organization and no wonder why the Marlins want to trade him. Miami is doing this all wrong though, rather than waiting for all this to hit the internet thus lowering Ozuna's trade value they waited too long. Miami's screw up can be New York's gain.

Miami wants young starting pitching back for Ozuna and the Yankees have some, maybe not enough. I wouldn't give up Luis Severino for Ozuna but truth be told I would allow Nathan Eovaldi to head back to Miami and I would also lead a package with Michael Pineda. If the team is interested is Bryan Mitchell or Rookie Davis then let them go, Ozuna is a special talent. The problem is Seattle is said to be offering Taijuan Walker for Ozuna as we speak, New York may not be willing to bite that bullet and match.

Either way adding Ozuna to the Yankees continues to make the team younger, cheaper and absolutely leads to a Brett Gardner trade. The lineup is balanced, power is added and overall I think the team is exponentially better. It's a dream, every team is going to be interested in Ozuna, but Cashman hasn't worn his ninja costume in a while either... so maybe.