More A.J. Burnett News

A lot of tweets going on today that the Pirates are probably the clubhouse favorite to land A.J. Burnett.

While I was doing laundry this morning Buster Olney fired off a few tweets about the progress:

The Pirates and Yankees haven't agreed on final players or dollar amount, but they're talking within that common ground to settle details.

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) February 12, 2012

The Burnett deal is not done, but the Yankees and Pirates have a lot of common ground, and Pittsburgh is the clear frontrunner as of 2/12.

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) February 12, 2012

Pirates and Yankees have a framework of a possible AJ Burnett deal in place, and they are now working through conditions of that framework.

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) February 12, 2012

Then a little later on in the afternoon Jon Heyman chipped in some of his information

#yankees don't love the 2 minor leaguers #pirates offered for aj. best guess, it still gets done, with pitt paying $13-15M of aj's $33M

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeymanCBS) February 12, 2012

#pirates more concerned about prospects than money (good for them), so more likely to copmpromise on $. #aj

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeymanCBS) February 12, 2012

So basically this is where we thought things were going to be on this front. The Pirates are probably going to deal a prospect or two to the Yankees and the skill of the prospect will probably depend on how much money the Pirates are going to eat.

This deal probably isn't going to get done soon but the Pirates seems to be the team that the Yankee's are oging to deal with if they are going to move Burnett.

I have been talking with a lot of people on twitter about Burnett and while I will cover this more if/when the deal happens I would like to see this happen. At worst the Pirates are going to eat a little money but they are going to be adding some much needed depth to a rotation that, as of right now, only has Charlie Morton, James McDonald, Erik Bedard, Jeff Karstens, Kevin Correia and Brad Lincoln. Adding another arm that can throw 160-200 innings would be a boost and he would probably replace Correia in the rotation, which would be a good thing in my eyes.

Ken Rosenthal wrote a little piece talking pretty much a about what I just said just as I was about to post this.