Wednesday Stuff

Not much today... again.

I guess I forgot to write about the Seth Smith trade from the other day, so we can start with that.  The Rockies moved Seth Smith to the Oakland A's for Guillermo Moscoso and Josh Outman.  Smith had a ton of rumors circulating his head at the start of the offseason, and it seemed like a lot of people were interested, but that couldn't have been the case, since the Rockies got two mediocre, fly-ball heavy starting-ish pitchers for him.  I can't imagine either to do much in Colorado, especially with that ballpark, but hey, sometimes you have to give up a platoon-OF in order to get your 9th and 10th starters.  This is probably a steal for Billy Beane.

Brandon Morrow and Casey Janssen couldn't reach an agreement with the Jays before yesterday's deadline, as I've already reported.  If you're following me on twitter (@alexgrady80), you would have noticed that I retweeted the initial reports from Ben Nicholson-Smith of MLBTR that Brandon Morrow submitted $4.2MM, while the Jays submitted $3.9MM, and that Casey Janssen submitted $2.2MM, while the Jays offered $1.8MM.  The relatively small discrepancies between the salaries should mean that the Jays will be able to avoid hearings, though AA has a policy that he'll only do multi-year deals after the arbitration submission deadline.  Multi-year deals, in this case, include 1-year deals with options, such as the one Jason Frasor signed before last season.

The Rangers and Yu Darvish have until 5PM ET today to finalize a deal.  It appears that the two sides are close to agreeing to a 6-year deal, presumably in the $55-60MM range.  Dice-K signed for 6/$52MM, which sets a nice precedent.

Jack Cust found a major league deal with the Houston Astros yesterday, which I find pretty funny.  It was rumored to be a 2-year deal, which almost broke the internet, but that was later revealed to be 1 year, $600k, non-guaranteed, with a club option.  Cust is, of course, really terrible now, after showing some extreme Wily-Mo Pena skills a few years ago.

The Chicago Cubs-Boston Red Sox-Theo Epstein thing is still going on, apparently.  Bud Selig has been handed the reins there, in terms of figuring out how the Red Sox should be compensated.  Here's an idea: work that shit out beforehand.

Finally, former Jay Jesse Barfield can apparently tell if you're on steroids or not, based solely on your throwing arm.  Whatever you say.