Unkempt.

Because I’m in the final stages of workup for tomorrow night’s Book Release Party, I had no plans to write today. The queue includes blank-so-far reports on Delino DeShields Jr., Kyle Blanks, and Kyuji Fujikawa, but after writing eight times in the space of five days last week, I needed a break from the keyboard. I’ll get to those stories soon.

I couldn’t stay quiet this morning, though.

Late in the day Tuesday, Ken Rosenthal (Fox Sports) reported that the Padres and Rays were “discussing [a] significant trade [involving] a number of players,” with “Wil Myers [the] main piece going to San Diego.”

Dozens of impassioned media tweets later, Jeff Passan (Yahoo!) dropped this one: “[The] sense among those in the know is that while Padres-Rays deal involving Wil Myers is straight-up, players dealt could be on the move again. . . . Could be a similar situation to what happened with Andrew Heaney: traded to one team, onto another. GM’s these days [are] always five steps ahead.”

If A.J. Preller is really about to land Myers, his trade for Matt Kemp makes more sense. I didn’t like the Kemp deal for San Diego, but I love the idea of buying low on Myers (ESPN’s Buster Olney: “For those wondering why the Rays would make Wil Myers available in trade: He’s been much more inconsistent than Tampa Bay thought he would be”), a move that would fit for that club with or without Kemp. And as long as Kemp isn’t going to be asked to anchor the middle of the Padres’ lineup alone, I dislike that trade for them less, and adding five years of Myers to five years of Kemp — especially if the Myers deal doesn’t force San Diego to move Tyson Ross or Andrew Cashner — starts changing the look of that club significantly.

As for Passan’s suggestion that there could be a third team involved, maybe it’s Texas, maybe it’s not, but I’m not so sure it’s San Diego who would be doing the flipping. Buying low on Myers, and keeping him, is exactly what that team should be doing.

Dave Cameron (FanGraphs) doesn’t necessarily agree, proposing the concept of one buy-low asset swapped for another:

So, let’s just speculate a bit. What the Padres need more than another corner outfielder is a shortstop. You know who has an extra young shortstop and needs a corner outfielder? The Texas Rangers. You know where A.J. Preller just worked, running the international scouting department when Jurickson Profar was signed as a 16-year-old? Yeah, the Texas Rangers.

Completely speculative, but perhaps the Padres are looking to acquire Myers because Preller knows that Jon Daniels wants him to play right field, and will give up Profar and some other of Preller’s old favorites. Given the injury problems Profar has suffered, I find it unlikely that there would be a one-for-one trade, but I could see a situation where the Padres are trading prospects to get the guy that gets them Profar.

Maybe.

Doubt it.

Daniels hasn’t made a Kemp-level move and isn’t rumored to be zeroing in on a Myers-level move, despite having a much deeper farm system than Preller, but as we’ve talked about for years, having players like Rougned Odor and Joey Gallo and Jorge Alfaro and Nomar Mazara and Chi Chi Gonzalez and Jake Thompson seems to have the unwanted effect of making it harder to lock other teams in on players like Luis Sardinas and Nick Williams and Lewis Brinson and Luke Jackson and Hanser Alberto, a group that I’d put up against the prospects the White Sox gave up for Jeff Samardzija, for instance, but then again I’m not crazy about trading for one year of a number two starter — especially one who spent lots of time pitching for the Chicago Cubs.

Or moving a frontline prospect for Howie Kendrick, or Jimmy Rollins.

Or prospects on the first tier or the second or the third for Josh Hamilton, a player Rosenthal reported yesterday the Angels have had “exploratory talks” with the Rangers and Padres about, talks that “did not gain traction.” (MLB.com’s Jesse Sanchez: “Sources tell me the Josh Hamilton return to Texas via trade with [the] Angels talk was a two-minute conversation and not something [the] Rangers pursued.”)

Or Gonzalez and Josh Morgan for one year of Justin Upton, a trade that Jim Bowden (ESPN/XM) proposes, and not just because it would seem to be awkward to make Morgan a player to be named later for the entire first half of the season, as he would need to be procedurally.

Those things have as much chance of happening as Jon Heyman’s suggestion that Max Scherzer lands in Texas, which he calls the righthander’s number three “potential landing spot,” behind the Yankees and Cardinals. The Rangers aren’t going to drop $200 million on anybody. They’re looking to improve on the trade market instead.

Unfortunately, the way the trade market has developed, prospects don’t appear to be the game’s lead currency at the moment, as two dozen teams appear to be convicted about their chances to compete for at least their league’s second Wild Card spot. And the Rangers don’t have the depth in young, impact, Major League-ready players to trade (compare what Arizona got from Boston for Wade Miley), unless they’re willing to move Odor. (They better not be.)

Texas will have more leverage in July, when the trade market is flooded with 5+ pitchers and bats, and the teams trying to move them will be punting, looking not to October, but to 2016. The Rangers’ prospects will carry more value then. Even those on the second tier, and the third.

I’m not sure if it’s fairweather to abandon what had been your second-favorite team, but I’m realizing now that the reason it was Tampa Bay for me the last few years wasn’t Longo or Zobrist or David Price, but instead two other guys who are no longer there, one now running baseball operations in Los Angeles and the other the dugout in Chicago.

But, hey, maybe the Rays are getting Tyson Ross and three Padres prospects in this Padres deal and are flipping two of the kids plus Zobrist to Joe Maddon’s Cubs for Javier Baez (in spite of Passan’s belief that the Nationals are the third team), and then I’ll keep my seat on the lightly populated Tampa Bay bandwagon.

Believe me, I’m hoping my first-favorite team is working on another trade, whether it’s for a number three starter or a number five hitter, and I don’t think Texas had the right pieces to get the Dodgers to pay Matt Kemp down as much as they did, though I’ll wonder if the Rangers could have built a package of non-Odor/Gallo/Alfaro/Mazara/Gonzalez/Thompson prospects for Myers that would have interested the Rays — or Nationals — as much as whatever San Diego is apparently parting with out of its weaker system.

I also didn’t think Kemp was the right move for the Padres, until now. Assuming they aren’t moving Ross or Cashner, my understanding of what they appear to be doing isn’t quite as disheveled anymore.