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| Day 2, can't you read? |
Late o'clock: It's down to the Marlins and the Cardinals for Albert, according to Jim Bowden, and that the Marlins are very confident, according to Joe Capozzi. I am too excited.
The Tigers are apparently working hard to get Gio Gonzalez. Fuck you, I want him.
12:40 AM ET: New Yoenis Cespedes video coming out after the winter meetings! If you missed the other one, fuck you, but here you go:
Beyond that, the Brewers are probably going to get Aramis Ramirez. Jon Heyman of Sports Illustrated claims that the Brewers are being very aggressive in pursuit, and that the Phillies are losing interest, presumably because they're making progress with Jimmy Rollins.
Midnight:20 ET: Conflicting reports out there... A lot of twitterings about both the Cubs and Angels being out of the Albert Pujols sweeps. Nick Cafardo says no cubs pretty emphatically, and Mike DiGiovanna says that an unnamed AL GM says "no way" for the Angels. Take it for what it's worth folks.
Midnight ET: First off, I just got a notification that someone "+1'ed" my post. Cool. I don't think that's ever happened.
Next, as many as four teams could be in on Albert Pujols. The Marlins and Cards are the obvious ones, but the mystery team mentioned earlier are rumored to be either the Cubs or the Angels, and the way things are shaping up on the rumor mill, both could be involved, assuming I understand everything correctly.
The Dodgers have signed Josh Bard, adding to their giant pile of utility players. The D'backs have signed Lyle Overbay, probably to one-up the Dodgers. The Marlins were hoping to have the Pujols situation resolved by tonight so that if they missed out, they'd still be able to look at other options before they were exhausted by other teams, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen tonight.
It looks like the Red Sox are going to cut ties with Tim Wakefield and Jason Varitek, which kind of sucks from the perspective of a fan anybody but the Red Sox.
Finally, the Mariners are going to meet with Prince Fielder tonight. They don't know what kind of chances they have, but they're pursuing it anyway. As has been said all offseason, whoever misses out on Pujols will more than likely try for Fielder.
10:15ET: The Cubs are apparently still in on Pujols, and are the "mystery team" that was mentioned earlier.
The Angels are still looking in to CJ Wilson, and are drawing interest already in Ervin Santana, just in case the CJ signing does in fact happen. I still think it's pretty unlikely that Wilson has a 6-year deal on the table, but I suppose it could be true. I expect the Jays to be among the biggest Santana chasers if he ever becomes available.
10:10 ET: Frank Francisco has signed with the NY Mets, agreeing to a 2-year deal worth $12MM, though I assume there are buyouts and team options included in there. This was pretty much assured once the Jays acquired Sergio Santos this afternoon. Frank will net the Jays a compensation pick in the sandwich round. Dotel next, I imagine.
9:56ET: Confirmed, pending physicals, according to a Joel Sherman (@joelsherman1) series of tweets.
9:45ET: Giants too! They were rumored to be shopping Keppinger, Torres and Ramon Ramirez earlier. I love this time of year. MLBTR is reporting Torres and Ramirez for Angel Pagan as a rumor, based on an Andrew Baggarly tweet.
9:35 ET: Trade a'comin'! Apparently the Mets are closing in on a trade with another team looking to "change-of-scenery" somebody. I can't think of anyone on the Mets who qualifies, but until Travis Snider's name isn't announced, I'm nervous. But willing. gogogogogo
edit- Jason Bay?
9:00 ET: Jon Rauch is close to a deal with the NY Mets! Not only does that mean that he can get the fuck out of here and never pitch for the Jays again, but he'll also net a sandwich pick for the Jays in the upcoming draft! Fucking awesome.
In Pujols news, a "mystery team" (THE TORONTO BLUEJAYS?!?!?!?) has joined in on the party, and Pujols now has 3 offers of 10y/200MM+... or if you've never experienced an offseason before, Dan Lozano is trying to stop the Marlins from setting up a deadline, since going past that deadline would take all leverage away from Pujols. Nice try, Dan.
7:20: The Marlins offer to Pujols is in the 10 year, $220MM range, says MLBTR. Add a quarter of a win to each season in the chart I made earlier, and you get a value of $219.8MM for 45 WAR. Bitches be crazy. Joel Sherman of the NY Post says that the Marlins will set a deadline for Pujols if they haven't already.
Elsewhere, CJ Wilson has 4y/~60MM in hand from the Rangers. That probably won't get it done, especially if there actually is a 5 or 6 year deal out there, as was reported yesterday.
David Ortiz is expected to accept the Red Sox' arbitration offer.
6:30PM:
There are also some rumbling about John Danks and his trade value, where apparently Kenny Williams is looking for a similar bounty to what the Rockies got for Ubaldo Jimenez, which included Drew Pomeranz. At first I thought that seemed ridiculous, but based on rWAR, Danks is probably better than Jimenez, and is a year younger.
6PM ET: LIARS! The Red Sox have not won the rights to Nakajima.
5:20ET: John Farrell is meeting with the media right now, presumably about the Santos trade, but I'm sure there will be some other stuff there too. I'd follow @shidavidi on twitter for these.
5:15 ET: Sports Nippon is reporting that the Boston Red Sox have won the posting auction for the rights to negotiate with Hiroyuki Nakajima. Assuming he's ready to go at the start of the season (and why shouldn't he be?), Marco Scutaro and/or Jed Lowrie should be very expendable. Still unsure whether the Red Sox would even discuss a trade with the Jays without asking for John Farrell in return, but either could be a fit at 2B for the Jays. I honestly don't think the Sox would deal either player to a team within the division.
4:35 PM ET: Party's over in Miami... Hanley Ramirez doesn't want to move from SS, and is apparently furious. Cue Hanley to TOR rumors.
3:35PM ET: Kevin Gray is mad about this trade for the Jays. He ranked Molina as the Jays top prospect like a month ago, so that's understandable.
Jim Bowden believes the Mariners are now the frontrunners for Prince Fielder, though I wouldn't expect him to sign until at least after Albert does. Teams are looking for shorter term deals at higher annual values for Fielder, so if nobody steps up with 7-8 years, the Jays could be back in the mix in theory, though many other teams could be back in.
The rumored deal to Albert from Marlins does not include a full no-trade clause, according to Marlins' president David Samson.
3:00PM ET: AA had some comments about the trade a little while ago, and among them, he said that he expects Frank Frank to be signing with another club at some point this offseason, rejecting arbitration. If so, he'll be worth a sandwich pick. Check Shi Davidi's blog for more from AA.
As for the Marlins-Pujols talks, apparently the Marlins are cool with giving Pujols a full no-trade clause. This could be the deal-breaker.
2:30 PM ET: Marlins execs just left a meeting with Albert Pujols' agent, Dan Lozano. Nobody commented. Marlin's owner Jeffrey Loria, when asked if he had a new 1B, apparently said "No comment" and then snapped his fingers for some reason. I'm not making this up.
1:06: The Giants are looking to move Jeff Keppinger, Andres Torres, and Ramon Ramirez. I'd expect the Jays to show interest in Ramirez, and at least have a look at Keppinger. Forget Torres.
12:48 PM ET-- Edit: I have made the Santos/Molina trade it's own post here.
We last heard that the offer is above $200MM, so this is probably pretty close. Perhaps we could subtract something like .1WAR from each year or something, or maybe they have a slightly sharper decrease from '16 onwards?
Noon-ish ET-- Nothing major really happened between my last update last night and right now, but there are some little spatterings of information that we can certainly pass along, almost entirely of the not-Blue Jays variety.
First off, MLBTR tells us that the posting for Hiroyuki Nakajima is over, and that the winner will be announced by the Seibu Lions at some point today. Nakajima is a shortstop who put up a .385 OBP in the Japanese League last season, and was regarded as the 2nd best hitter there. The Jays are rumored to have had some interest, and just may very well be the team to have won the rights to his services. Whichever team won the posting auction will have 30 days to negotiate a contract with Nakajima.
Albert Pujols apparently has a 10-year offer in hand from the Miami Marlins, with approximately $200MM. Shit is about to get real.
The Twins have made a three-year offer to Michael Cuddyer worth up to $25MM, and apparently view Josh Willingham as a back-up plan if Cuddyer doesn't work out. I would prefer Willingham to be honest. The Twins have also traded Kevin Slowey to Colorado for a PTBNL, and my only response is in picture form.
Slowey is not only terrible, but has also been one of the more extreme flyball pitchers in baseball over the last few years, which obviously plays really atrociously at Coors Field, where the air is incredibly thin and balls just fly out of that park like whoa. And they're going to pay him $2.7MM. This could be a precursor to a trade involving Huston Street, as he is rumored to be on the move at some point this week.
And finally, the Dodgers signed Aaron Harang to a 2 year, $12MM mistake. Harang had a seemingly good year last year, though he outperformed his fip and xfip drastically, thanks to pitching at Petco Park last year. The Dodgers are really just filling the entire organization with random scrubs this offseason to complement Matt Kemp and Clayton Kershaw.
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