The Internet is ablaze with rumors that Ubaldo Jimenez could be traded before the 2011 trade deadline, possibly to the Yankees. The talk seems to stem from a Ken Rosenthal video blog in which he mentions that the Rockies are getting calls about, but not actively shopping, their ace right-hander.

According to Cot’s, Jimenez is signed through 2012 with club options for 2013 and 2014. Assuming the Rockies exercise those options, Jimenez will cost them roughly $18 million total for the next three seasons. If you’re playing at home, that means the Rockies have locked up the next three seasons of a pitcher with 131 career ERA+ for little more than the price of one season of Jason Bay.

Plus, any team acquiring Jimenez does not acquire the right to his 2014 option. As Tim Dierkes points out, that makes him more valuable to the Rockies than any acquiring team, much in the same way David Wright is more valuable to the Mets than to any potential trade partner.

Also, excellent young pitchers on long-term team-friendly deals don’t come around very often, and clubs that find them aren’t generally that eager to move them. The Rockies may be far from contention in 2011, but they’re hardly in position to write off 2012-2014. In other words, it just doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense for them to trade Jimenez unless a) they can command a massive haul in return and/or b) they know something about him the rest of us don’t. (His diminished velocity in 2011 could speak to the latter, though his peripherals are in line with past years.)

OK, the point here is spiraling away from me. If Jimenez is both fully healthy and truly available, it makes sense for most teams — not just the Yankees — to be calling the Rockies about working out a deal. That includes the Mets.

Here’s where that whole buyer/seller I keep bringing up comes in. You’re going to say, “Oh well the Mets can’t be buyers when they’re sitting at .500 and 8.5 games back of the Wild Card,” but when the next two years of Jimenez are in play, you know, sometimes you have to get when the getting is good. The Mets need frontline starting pitching, they don’t have any on the immediate horizon in the farm system, and paying for it on the free agent market is a fool’s errand.

But like I said, I don’t think the Rockies will really trade him, plus the Mets probably don’t have the requisite chips to get that sort of deal done anyway, so it’s immaterial.

All this has meant nothing. Carry on.