This feature, for the uninitiated, aims to satisfy our cravings for hot-stove information while recognizing it is for the most part nutritionally devoid. Today’s rumors three:

Teams are “kicking the tires” on Alfonso Soriano: First, note that Ken Rosenthal, who presents this information courtesy “a major league source,” gives us “kicking the tires” in quotes. I don’t know what to make of that. Does that mean it’s a direct quote from the source? Is it Rosenthal’s literary interpretation of making the little air-quotes with his fingers?

More importantly, when teams kick the tires on Alfonso Soriano, what do they expect will come out? Normally you hear of tires being kicked on frequently injured reclamation-project types, the Chris Youngs of the world. And maybe in those cases, all kidding aside, the term means only that the team is doing its due diligence: investigating all the necessary medical records, consulting doctors, and talking to kinesiologists, phrenologists and any other experts that might provide insight on whether the player will hold up for a full Major League season.

Soriano has had a series of minor injuries with the Cubs, but he played 137 games in 2011 and 147 in 2010. His issue isn’t health: It’s that he’s not very good. So unless a team thinks kicking his tires is going to shock him into walking more and becoming immune to the effects of time, he’s probably not going to be very valuable to anyone even if the Cubs do pick up a hefty chunk of his remaining contract.

A better way to put it might be that many teams are looking at the tires on Alfonso Soriano, and seeing that the treads are worn down and the sidewalls are scratched up and the tires probably were never as good as everyone said to begin with. Smart money says the Cubs would be pretty happy to get rid of him and any portion of his contract they can salvage, so maybe he does get moved. But he’s probably an emergency donut tire on a good team at this point.

The Marlins told C.J. Wilson they want him in their starting rotation: Man, the Marlins say a lot of things, don’t they? Lips grow loose after boozy nights of stone-crab claws and frozen cocktails in Miami Beach. Not for C.J. Wilson, of course: He’s str8-edge. But maybe Jeffrey Loria or some other member of the Marlins’ brass is one of those I-seriously-love-you-guys type of drinkers who doesn’t know when to shut up. “No, really, bro… whatever it takes. $160 million? Carl Crawford money? Anything, bro. Seriously, bro, I want you in our starting rotation, like, RIGHT NOW!”

And then the next morning: Oh man my head hurts, what the hell did I tell C.J. Wilson last night? I somehow forgot I operate the team that has never spent more than $60 million on payroll. Actually I think I’ve already blown our entire 2012 budget on stone-crab claws.

The last hot-stove rumor is actually an anti-rumor. But it’s so definitively worded that I thought it worth noting here. If you’re trafficking in rumors, it makes sense to qualify almost everything you write to cover your ass for when you’re wrong. So it’s refreshing to see something like this published on Dejan Kovacevic’s blog for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

“Let me skip past the newspaper-ese and spell this out a different way: If you just had the conversation I just had, you wouldn’t give another second of thought to [Andrew] McCutchen being traded.”

Hat tip to MLBTradeRumors.com for various links. But I assume you’re already reading MLBTradeRumors.com.