Cabrera to Twins Within The Hour?

UPDATE AT 1:18PM - Cabrera has been dealt to the Twins for Tyler Ladenorf. The delay in the deal was due to Cabrera’s agent wanting to negotiate with the Twins. Amazingly he got the Twins to agree to not offer arbitration. He’s projects to be a Type-A free agent, so now the Twins will get no compensation when he leaves in the offseason.

There are a lot of conflicting reports right now regarding the Minnesota Twins and their pursuit of Oakland Athletics shortstop Orlando Cabrera. Very early this morning most major media outlets were reporting that Cabrera was close to being a Twin. Just a little while ago, local beat writer La Velle Neal III from the Star Tribune was reporting differently, saying the asking price was too high. But just a few minutes ago Susan Slusser from the San Francisco Chronicle said a deal should be completed within the hour.

Neal suggests that a deal wasn’t close because Oakland’s asking price was too high. Reportedly asking for Minnesota third baseman Danny Valencia, someone the Twins were not high on trading in this kind of deal. He at least says Oakland general manager Billy Beane was probably just keeping the price high till the deadline nears.

Knowing Beane’s history he probably has kept the bar high hoping a team would cave in to his demands. If he really wants to move Orlando then he’d need to lower his price, especially with the deadline fast approaching.

With Slusser reporting that a deal should be completed within the hour, I’d have to think that price was lowered. I wonder how far thou? She’s said in the post that Valencia is definitely not part of the deal. She actually just updated the post and changed the time frame from within the hour, to one to two hours.

That tells me the teams are close to something but can’t quite work out the minor details. I’d say this deal gets finalized by 4 pm.