From the Newark Star-Ledger’s Dan Graziano.
According to two baseball officials familiar with the talks, the Mets have been involved in several complicated trade discussions with the hope of landing Manny Ramirez. Both officials said the large, complex deals still required a lot of work, but that the Mets were keeping their toe in the water in case they still had a chance to add Ramirez to their 2006 lineup.
One of the possibilities would involve a multi-team deal in which Mets pitcher Kris Benson would end up in Baltimore, Tejada in Boston and Ramirez with the Mets (with a variety of other players and cash bouncing around in the deal as well). The Orioles like Benson and, earlier this off-season, offered reliever Jorge Julio for him. The Mets have been looking to trade him and certainly would do so if it meant bringing in Ramirez for right field.
The “variety of other players” portion of this seems to be the most complicated part of the equation. There’s no way the Orioles can sell their fans on the notion that Kris Benson for Tejada represents fair value, to say nothing of the message it would send to Jeromy Burnitz.