Huh? Why wouldn't they? I guess I don't understand the point. "Hey, you know who we should try to trade for? Papelbon." "Agreed. We could use him. Let's call the Phillies in a month to see how they feel about it." Obviously that's oversimplified, but I don't understand why a front office would talk about trading for a guy internally when you don't even know if he's available or what it would take externally. You have scouts checking players out all the time. But there's really nothing gained beyond "do we want him or not?" from the internal talks. And I don't know how anyone would know until it was at the point of calling the Phillies. I would think they keep a "wish list" of specific guys they have interest in talking about around the trade deadline. And they'd talk about who should be on such a list and/or who should come off of that list.