Spiegel: Cubs Seemingly Just A Pawn In Anibal Sanchez’s Game

" (CBS) The near misses for Theo Epstein’s Cubs are piling up.

Over the last six months, three separate deals have been reported as basically done, only to wither and die amidst all too public complications.

The trend would be troubling, if the dots truly connected. But they don’t.

Ryan Dempster’s eventually rebuffed deal to become a Brave was first reported by the beat writer for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Dreams of pitching prospect Randall Delgado eventually went away amidst an invoked no-trade clause; Dempster evokes ire now and in perpetuity. Enjoy Boston and the AL East.

The bad money exchange with the Angels in which Dan Haren was bathed in Cubdom for about four Twitter hours was leaked by Carlos Marmol, to a Spanish language reporter in the Dominican Republic. Marmol is still being openly shopped, while Haren ended up as a National.

And yesterday’s surprising, then ultimately disappointing, Anibal Sanchez tease appears to have been a skillfully played public game from Sanchez’s agent. The information flowed from USA Today’s well connected Bob Nightengale, with unattributed contextual tweets mixed in with direct agent quotes "

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