Rays turned down 'greater' offer from Pirates for David Price

Peter Gammons reports (or apparently reports -- this is a secondhand account of something he said on MLB Network) that the Rays turned down a David Price offer from the Pirates that was better than the one they got from the Tigers.

Most people thought the Pirates' offer, which was all about prospects and minor leaguers, might have been greater in terms of talent and that the Pirates were much closer to getting Price than we realize. But the way that the Rays look at it in Franklin and in Smyly, they get two current Major League players who are under control for a long time [and] cost efficient.

This doesn't surprise me. What the Rays got shouldn't have been hard for the Pirates, or any number of other teams, to top. Unfortunately, as with the Red Sox and Jon Lester, the Rays didn't want prospects -- both the Red Sox and the Rays have a lot of talent, and they sensibly realized they could build for 2015 and not for four years from now. Neither franchise was in need of a complete rebuild. Unfortunately, most of what the Pirates had to offer in trades was players who might be good two years or four years from now, not players who might be good next year. Usually that's exactly what you want, because the teams with David Prices on the market are the teams looking to rebuild, but that wasn't the case this year.

Hat tip: From Forbes to Federal