I keep hearing more and more about an Adrian Gonzalez move. Momentum — and the East Coast drumbeat — keeps building for a trade. The feeling around Boston is that the Red Sox absolutely have to bag him, as a year-after counterpunch to losing out to the Yankees on Mark Teixeira.

If the Sox do land Gonzalez, it of course will have been an inside job. The mole being Jed Hoyer, the former Theo Epstein aide who recently took over as the Padres general manager.

In all seriousness: Hoyer’s involvement will actually make a San Diego-Boston swap harder to pull off.

Why? Because the specifics would have to be cynics-proof. Weighted even more in the Padres’ favor than under normal circumstances. Anything less, and suspicious Friars fans will raise a stink specifically about the Hoyer-Red Sox connection. …

My feeling is the Red Sox need to be more concerned with keeping up with the Yankees rotation. Roy Halladay should be atop Epstein’s list, even if Doc didn’t have a personal 18-6 record against the Bombers. …

If Hideki Matsui is the loser in his private game of musical chairs with Johnny Damon — the Yankees will bring back only one of them — the popular expectation is that the Mariners would emerge as his logical landing place. It makes sense — the M’s history with Japanese players, Japanese majority ownership — but ignores one factor: Ichiro and Matsui aren’t extremely fond of each other, and may not co-exist. …

This was a headline part of preseason outlooks, but hasn’t been revisited after-the-fact: No team with a starting shortstop 35-or-older had ever won the World Series — until Derek Jeter’s Yankees pushed that envelope. …