Kyle Lohse rumors should take a hit as Edwin Jackson's contract demands decline

It's a bad free agency rumors week for former St. Louis Cardinals starters. The San Diego Padres recently backed out of the Edwin Jackson sweepstakes after refusing to offer a fourth year. And if they're not going to offer a fourth year to a 29-year-old league-average-plus innings-eater, it's hard to imagine someone doing so for Kyle Lohse, a 34-year-old league-average-plus innings-eater.

Of course this was what analysts suggested Lohse would be worth in the first place--a three-year-ish deal around $10-million-ish. But early speculation about this year's overheated free agency market had some rumor mavens going as high as five years for Lohse--if not quite getting Anibal Sanchez money for his troubles.

The Kyle Lohse market, for its part, has been pretty quiet of late, at least in its public-facing capacity, so it could be that nobody knows how much he's worth in the odd Dodgers-centric market that's developed this winter. Grant Brisbee, at Baseball Nation, made the most recent effort to evaluate his prospects, and concluded that he'd end up with... the St. Louis Cardinals. Which is as good a guess as any I've seen so far, if nothing else, even though it's probably exactly the part of the dream where Shelby Miller wakes up in a cold sweat.