Farrell-y Interesting

Well, it looks like this whole John Farrell trade thing is going to happen.  I dunno, who cares?  The big shame would see Farrell taking some (or all?) of the coaching staff with him.  Apparently Brian Butterfield, Torey Luvollo and Don Wakamatsu still haven't had their contracts resolved.

Anyway, I think the stark contrasts between this year's and last year's Farrell rumors speak pretty loudly.  Last year, the Jays altered a policy simply to get away from the distractions of having the Red Sox come around to poach Toronto personnel, whereas this year, we're hearing absolutely nothing from the Jays, and a bunch of talk from Boston sports writers about how AA and Farrell don't get along and that they're ready to part ways.

The Red Sox have apparently asked for permission to speak directly to Farrell, which would typically suggest that they're negotiating a contract.  Sounds advanced enough to me.  Now we just have to figure out what the Jays want.

And that's really all this is about, I would say.  It doesn't really matter that the Jays (apparently) are growing tired with Farrell for whatever reason, or that AA and Farrell are rumored to not see eye-to-eye on everything, such as Omar Vizquel's role on the team this year (reported in the Elliott link above).  The Jays have something that the Red Sox want. Advantage: Blue Jays.

Stuff
There was a trade today, to officially kick off the offseason, despite the fact that the offseason hasn't actually started yet.  The D'Backs aquired Heath Bell and infielder Cliff Pennington, The Marlins acquired prospect Yordy Cabrera, and the A's acquired CF Chris Young and $500k.  The Marlins are eating $8MM of the $21MM remaining on Bell's contract.

To me, this is a nice deal for the A's, despite the fact that they now have four outfielders (Cespedes, Young, Crisp, Reddick) to fill three spots, which works if they want to stick Cespedes at DH.  They move Pennington, who had become expendable with the entrance of Stephen Drew.

The D'Backs shore up their bullpen, to an extent, but heh... Bell was really bad this year, and was probably a product of Petco.  Pennington is decent, I guess.  The D'Backs had a bit of a roster crunch, with Young, Parra, Kubel, Upton and Adam Eaton.

Miami obviously gets rid of Bell and his hilarious contract, and score a decent prospect as well.