Rumblings from the Meetings
Quick reactions to some of the rumors going around right now:
1. M’s interested in Edwin Jackson? Woohoo. We’ve been pushing for the M’s to pick up one of Tampa’s excess starters for months. Jackson’s a good arm and would fit in well as a buy low, high upside candidate. He’s a lot better than the mainstream opinion would have you believe.
2. M’s interested in dealing Richie Sexson? One year too late, but again, woohoo. This is the most obvious move of the winter – dump Sexson for whatever you can get, freeing up a position to get Ibanez out of the outfield, and sign a legitimate defensive LF (Geoff Jenkins!) to improve the defense.
3. M’s out of Johan Santana sweepstakes – not a big surprise, and something I’m totally fine with.
4. M’s have offered Hideki Kuroda either a 3 year, $30 million deal or a 4 year, $44 million deal, depending on who you believe. I’m still holding to the stance that we don’t have enough information to make any real informed opinions on either side, but man, $44 million for a guy with no outpitch?
So far, the rumors are at least mostly encouraging. But let’s see them actually do something productive before we get too excited.
Winter Meetings, Day One
So, the winter meetings kick off today. Generally, this three day period is the busiest of baseball’s offseason, and it would be odd if we didn’t see at least a couple of trades and some big free agent signings. With all 30 teams hanging out in one hotel in Nashville, stuff will get done, and the rumors will be flying fast and furious.
The M’s have made no secret out of the fact that their offseason plan is basically to just add two starting pitchers, with one of those targets being Hideki Kuroda. So, expect them to kick the tires on a few other options while they wait for his decision, and talk to a bunch of teams about available starting pitchers in trade. I’m sure there will also be some talks about moving Richie Sexson (seriously, Sexson to SF for Durham makes so much sense – just call Sabean and get it done), and the team will talk to some veteran relievers. The M’s won’t be the busiest team at the meetings, but they’ll be involved in a lot of different things.
One of those things probably won’t be Johan Santana, however – reports today have him telling the Twins that he’s only waiving his no-trade clause to go to Boston or New York. That’s probably for the best, honestly – trying to compete with those two teams in terms of giving up talent for Johan is a bad idea.
Anyway, we’ll keep you up to date with news and rumors of substance the next few days, and we’ll provide analysis of any moves the M’s make as quickly as we can.
The one thing we’re going to ask, however, is please don’t sit there and constantly refresh the front page waiting for news to break – our server can’t handle it, and it’s not going to do you any good if you just knock us offline.