Winter Meetings-- Day 3

1:00ET:

Yu Darvish will be posted tomorrow.  Get your dancing shoes on everybody.  Well, don't put them on, I guess, because you're probably getting ready for bed, or at least winding down to the point where you're not going to wear shoes specific for dancing at this point on a Wednesday.  This seems like more of a kick-back-and-relax point in time of the evening, pretty much regardless of your current location worldwide, assuming nobody is reading this from a spot where it also happens to be a good time for dancing.  Anyway, Dave Cameron from Fangraphs said that he expects the Red Sox and Yankees to pretty much strangle each other on the auction for Darvish's services, and I apparently the Blue Jays are fucking poor (FUCK!  RIGHT?!?!), so I think the hype around Darvish in TOR is just that.  I could be wrong though.

There are a few rumblings around the meetings at this time, but I think things are pretty well settled for the night, unless the Darvish news wakes everyone.  CJ Wilson is expected to sign tomorrow, and Albert Pujols was expected to sign today until the Angels hopped in with an offer for $210MM.  I would hazard a guess that the Cardinals' offer is higher, or at least equal to that one, and I only think Pujols would agree to go wherever the highest bid is if it were significant (i.e. the Angels would need to offer much more money/years to make their offer work).  He wants to stay in STL, and the difference between $200MM and $205MM isn't really one that fucking matters, at least it shouldn't.  This is all leverage for Lozano and Pujols to make a shitload of money from the Cards, but ultimately, expect Pujols to sign in STL tomorrow.  Predicting 10y/$216MM.

I think we will probably wake up to a few DFA's or releases or really minor trades as teams make some room for the rule 5 draft.  Teams must have an empty spot on their 40-man roster to be eligible for the rule-5 draft, and I couldn't possibly be bothered to go through and see who has empty spots and who doesn't.  I do know that the Jays currently have a full one, and that the Pirates have released Ross Ohlendorf to make room on theirs, which filled when they acquired Yamaico Navarro earlier tonight.


12:15: Kelly Johnson has accepted arbitration and will be back on the roster for the 2012 season. The Jays will get a paltry 6 picks in the first round of the 2012 draft, instead of the 8 that they would have gotten had Johnson rejected and signed elsewhere.  This isn't the end of the world, because Johnson is probably better than any other 2B option out there, save for maybe Martin Prado.  The Jays will need to remove someone shitty from the 40-man roster if they wish to grab someone in the rule-5 draft.

K-Rod has accepted as well, and will rejoin the Brewers bullpen, at least for now.

11:24:  Expect a CJ Wilson decision tonight.  He appears to want to pitch in Anaheim, but Miami is apparently offering 6 years.

Dan Lozano is still wheeling and dealing for Albert Pujols.  Apparently the Angels are still in, and a mysterious third team is still interested too.  Rumor has it that the Cards' offer is only for 9 years.

Scott Boras says that Prince Fielder has a number of offers, including some from teams he wasn't expecting.  The Marlins are almost certainly out though.

The Cubs and Rangers are discussing a trade for Matt Garza, which pretty much locks up the prospect of the Rangers losing CJ Wilson.

Expect Ryan Madson to decline the Phillies' arbitration offer.  K-Rod is still undecided apparently, for some reason.

The Pittsburgh Pirates have acquired Yamaico Navarro from the Royals for two prospects, Diego Goris and Brooks Pounders.  Pounders was a 2nd rounder in 2009, Goris has played in the Dominican Summer League for four straight years, but other than that I can't really find any info on him pertaining to signing bonuses or whatever.  Navarro was as a free agent by the Red Sox and was traded last year for Mike Aviles.  He hasn;t done much in 125 mlb PA's or something like that, and has pretty mediocre numbers in the minors all the way through.  This was a move to clear up a spot on the 40-man roster for the Royals, presumably so they can get someone in the rule-5 draft tomorrow.

The Latroy Hawkins signing is official.

9:45:  Tigers close to Dotel, Angels close to Latroy Hawkins.  Kelly Johnson's arbitration decision due in 2 hours.

8:39:  It appears the Marlins withdrew their offer to Pujols, as opposed to Pujols/Lozano telling the Marlins that they were out of the running.  I'm not sure if that had anything to do with the Buehrle signing, nor do I know the timeline of what happened between the Marlins and the two free agents, but whatever.

Elsewhere, the Red Sox offered David Ortiz a two year deal worth $18-ishMM this afternoon, and have since upped to to closer to $20MM.  Bringing Ortiz back sort of precludes them from chasing Carlos Beltran to play RF, both from a budget and lineup standpoint.  They may look in to Cody Ross now.  Jayson Stark believes that if Ortiz wins his arbitration case (i.e. they pay Ortiz more than $13-14MM), they probably won't spend big on an OF or a closer.  I'm not sure whether or not that means that they wouldn't trade for a closer or not, but I assume that higher payroll means that they're more likely to make a deal for Andrew Bailey.

Elsewhere, Gregor has stuff about the Jays financial situation, which appears to have been blown so far out of proportion my ears are starting to bleed.

8:30: Nothing major has happened in the last couple of hours, but it seems like we're kind of on the cusp of something-ish.  In the meantime... I didn't mention it earlier, mostly because I had a bit of an idea for a full post that didn't really turn in to anything so I'll just stick it in here.  That's what he said.

The Pirates had a pretty busy day, overshadowed by the Albert Pujols/Mark Buehrle/Prince Fielder/CJ Wilson stuff, by signing Jose Morales, Nate Mcclouth, and Erik Bedard, and apparently being close with Wilson Betemit.  Remember that time that I wrote a book about Paul Maholm and his contract option?  Do you think they couldn't have found a taker here this weekend?  Sure they might have had to eat some cash, but they would have gotten something better than fucking Jose Morales.  The Bedard deal is fine, but they're pretty much stocking up their bench/AAAA talent pool with the other signings.  I thought the Pirates might be kind of ready to compete this year, but the way things are looking now, with the way they opted to load up on organizational 25th-men, I'm not so sure they aren't just going to wait until next year.

8:05ET: Marlins are in on Wilson, not in on Fielder.  Asking prices on Niese and Murphy are "high" apparently.  Which is what you're supposed to say if you're going to trade someone, though if there are 4 teams interested, as is being reported, then there should be plenty of leverage for the Mets.

7:20ET:  Jimmy Rollins and the Phillies may as well be done and good to go.  Rollins et al cancelled a meeting with the Brewers, presumably because they had a deal finished with the Phillies, and now Jim Bowden says that it's close.

Joel Sherman says that the Jays are having a look at Jon Niese, and are spinning the wheels pretty hard along with the Red Sox, Padres and Rockies.  That probably means that the Jays are doing their due diligence, but aren't completely interested.  Yankees have called as well.  Looking at advanced metrics, Niese might be a better option that Gio Gonzalez. Stats compare pretty well, and the price for Niese would probably be much lower.

6:40:  Dan Lozano, Pujols' agent, claims that there are still 3 10y/200MM+ offers on the table, despite the Marlins being out.  By what I've read, Lozano told the Marlins that they were out, and not the other way around.  If that's the case, I call bullshit on the above rumor.  And honestly, I can't see the Marlins just saying "Ok fuck it, we quit" based on how aggressive they've been.  My best guess is that they're just giving everybody else a quick chance at the last minute to toss in an offer, or to get the Cards to jack up the offer a little bit.  Pujols to the Cards within the hour, IMO.

Susan Slusser's take on the Jays joining the Gio Gonzalez race.

6:15ET:  Gregg Zaun is on twitter saying that Jeff Mathis will hit better, now that he's gone from Anaheim.  Mike Scioscia really likes defense from his catchers, so Mathis just focused on D, and not on hitting.  Sounds wild.

A few people are tweeting that the Jays are having a look at Gio Gonzalez.  It's been brought to my attention that Gio walks an awful lot of people...

6:07:  Dan Lozano says that the Marlins are out on Pujols.  We'll see if this is real.

The Mets are looking for a catcher, infielder and some sort of prospect for Jon Niese.  Jays appear to be a fit if the Mets will take prospecty catchers/infielders... otherwise, meh.


6:00-ish: Marlins are still looking at Prince Fielder, despite spending something like $200MM in the last 3 days.

Octavio Dotel is close to signing somewhere, possibly Detroit.

Dave Cameron at fangraphs is doing a live chat right now!  He just called the Nats the favorites to land Yoenis Cespedes, hunches that the Brewers will re-sign Prince Fielder, and thinks the Red Sox and Yankees will go insane on Yu Darvish.

5:20:  I've been spelling Buehrle wrong all day.  B-U-E-H-R-L-E.  Ok.

4y/58MM is ballsy.  Buehrle is 32 (33 by the start of the year), and the Marlins are signing on for his age 33-36 seasons assuming he's a 3.5WAR player right now.  Back to the WAR vs. $ thing that I did yesterday for Pujols (which I made a pretty glaring mistake on now that I think about it... I'll repost once the Pujols deal is done), Buehrle needs to be worth 10WAR over the contract to be worth it, so assuming they're really going for it this year and next, this is sort of excusable in a sense?  But yeesh, the Marlins are just going to be dogshit in 3 years again, so this is pretty much just a big moneygrab I suppose.

Buehrle is bound to start aging sooner or later, but he's been durable enough throughout his career that the Marlins could find some surplus value somewhere.  I'm sure if he puts up 4+WAR this season or next then the Marlins will be fine with their deal no matter what he does over the final two.

5:05: The Marlins have officially lost their minds, signing Mark Buerhle to a 4 year, $58MM deal.  More on that in a minute.  The Marlins are probably out on CJ Wilson

Dave Cameron at Fangraphs has a look at the prospective Albert Pujols deal, kind of like I did, but has a different look at it based on backloading and inflation and correct math, and whatnot.

4:30: Ken Rosenthal says that the Hanley trade stuff is bogus.

4:20: Buster Olney says that Hanley asked the Marlins to restructure his contract because he was mad.  Then the Marlins got sad, and now they're looking to trade him.  This of course sounds exactly like something Buster Olney would say, sooo...  I dunno, wait and see I guess.  Hanley is owed $46MM over the next 3 years, which would help pay for someone else, or just reduce their payroll after adding trillions this offseason.

The Nationals are out on CJ Wilson, but still in on Mark Buehrle.  The Marlins have big offers to both, but will only whoever comes along first.

Aramis Ramirez declined arbitration.

3:52:  Joel Sherman expects the Mets to shop Jonathan Niese, and not Ike Davis.  Davis is at a valley in his value after an injury caused him to miss time last year.  The Mets plan on moving in their fences, so they're hoping Davis can rebuild some value.  Niese is being shopped as an alternative to Gio Gonzalez for whoever misses out on that train.

3:30: Multiple reports claiming that CJ Wilson has a 6-year offer in hand from the Marlins.  The Angels were reportedly in the lead for Wilson, but now if they don't match that, Wilson will probably be a Marlin.

Add David Ortiz to the list of arbitration accepty people.

The Huston Street deal is official, and the Rockies will eat just $1MM of salary.  Expect the PTBNL to never make it to the majors.

Kevin Gray tells us that Ricky Romero and former Miss USA turned pro wrestler turned drunk driver, Rima Fakih, have broken up.

3:00:  JP Morosi thinks Kelly Johnson is going to accept arbitration.  Likely the same with K-Rod.

Johnson accepting isn't really the end of the world.  He'll be an upgrade over the 3/4 of a season of Aaron Hill last year, and he could become a valuable member of the team, not just next season, but going forward as well.  He won't be one of those type-A equivalents or whatever you want to call it next year, so there's a chance of extending him longterm if he becomes worth it with his play this season.  There is obviously the negative aspect of losing out on the two draft picks; there are still 6 picks in the first 2 rounds for the Jays, but 8 is better than 6.
There is really something to say about the market for 2B right now, unless he's just asking for something absurd in terms of a contract.

Trevor Cahill is apparently being shopped by the A's, and Ike Davis is being discussed by the Mets.  The Mets should obviously be in firesale mode, and have said that they would listen on everybody but David Wright.  They should really include David Wright, but what do I know?  Anyway, teams who were interested in Prince/Pujols but missed will probably inquire.

2:50: To be filed under the "What the fuck?" label, the Cubs and Rockies are apparently discussing Tyler Colvin for Ian Stewart.  Assuming this is straight up, get ready to laugh at the Rockies.  There also seems to be something brewing with the Red Sox and Rangers, possibly concerning Jed Lowrie and Ranger relievers.  Stay tuned.

2:40: Heath Bell's adjusted type-A status will mean that the Padres will get a pick in the compensation round, and that the Mets will get a 2nd rounder from the Marlins, not the third rounder as was originally reported.  The Marlins have a protected first rounder.

The A's are unlikely to move Gio until after the meetings.  They want a deal similar to the aforementioned Dan Haren trade.

2:25 ET:  Jon Heyman says that the Marlins are pretty much giving up on Pujols and are now going after Prince.  In other words, expect a Pujols signing with STL soon.

2:15:  Pirates sign Erik Bedard.

The Huston Street deal may not be complete after all, but it seems as though they're just exchanging names and values or something, so this one should get done in a matter of hours, says Jayson Stark.

Phillies are out of the Gio bidding.  The A's are poor, so it seems that they require players who are not only cheap, but will remain cheap for a few years, i.e. players with little-to-no MLB experience.

2:00 PM ET:  Jose Reyes' contract is very backloaded.  The Marlins weren't going to give him a full no-trade, so by backloading the deal big time, they're considering that as close as possible.

The Globe's Jeff Blair is claiming that the Jays inquired on Jose Reyes, which shouldn't really mean a whole lot, since THEY INQUIRE ON EVERYBODY.  THIS ISN'T NEWS ANYMORE.
12:50 ET: Unrelated to mostly everything, but OMG REDDIT IS DOWN WTF?!?

12:40 ET:  Everything here is coming fom MLBTR.

The Marlins have no intention of moving Hanley Ramirez.  This is what people typically say when they get ready to move a player though, hoping to jack up the price.  President Larry Beinfest has said in the Jose Reyes presser that they fully intend on having Hanley at 3B this year.

Expect a resolution in the Albert saga today.  Buster Olney of ESPN says that Albert will probably stay in STL, per Cardinal officials.

The D'Backs are making a push for Gio Gonzalez now.  The two teams have hooked up in trades in the past, when the A's sent Dan Haren to the desert in December of '07, in exchange for Carlos Gonzalez, Greg Smith (both were later shipped to COL for Matt Holliday), Brett Anderson, Chris Carter, and former DFA-Jay Dana Eveland.  Expect a bajillion Gio rumors until something happens, because about 10 teams are going to be in on that one.

Expect Mark Buerhle to sign either today or tomorrow.

12:30 ET:  Early rumblings from today's meetings include:

The Rockies have traded closer Huston Street to the San Diego Padres, presumably to take over for Heath Bell.  My dad used to work with a guy named Heath Buell.  Weird huh?  Anyway, this goes to show how overrated the Closer tag really is.  The initial reports said that the Rockies would eat the entire $8MM contract in exchange for a prospect, but it appears that the Padres are taking the whole contract, and this will basically be a salary dump for the Rockies.  Street's move to Petco should really help his 1.54HR/9 rate.  I assume it will be a PTBNL, but the player going back to the Rockies hasn't been announced as of yet.

The Rockies are now said to be interested in Jair Jurrjens, now that they have some extra cash.

Elsewhere, the Yankees are believed to have won the posting auction for Hiroyuki Nakajima, as if they were going to have any use for him at all.  They have 30 days to negotiate a contract, and apparently plan on using him in a utility role.  Honestly.

The Angels are gunning to get a CJ Wilson deal done today.

The Yankees would be willing to eat $8MM in a trade for AJ Burnett.  Soooo generous.  Burnett is owed $33MM over the next two seasons, and has been goddamn terrible during his first three seasons in NY, so I'm guessing literally nobody bites.  Maybe if they would eat all but $8MM...

Mornin' folks!  Let's see what we missed overnight.

-The Cardinals have apparently upped their offer to Albert Pujols to the 10 year, $220MM range, believed to be in the same range as the Marlins offer.  The Cubs are believed to still be involved, though don't appear to be serious.   All things considered, expect Albert to stick around in STL if the offers are at all similar.

-Philadelphia is interested in Gio Gonzalez as a type of insurance against losing Cole Hamels to free agency.  If they get Gio, they'd probably trade Hamels, who has one year left before free agency.  Domonic Brown has been one name that's been thrown around, though I doubt just Brown would be enough.

- The Red Sox are discussing Andrew Bailey.  Josh Reddick and prospects was the last offer I saw.

- Mike Scioscia wants a pitcher.

- The Rays appear to be in on Yonder Alonso.

- The Dodgers are willing to trade James Loney, and don't want to absord salary.  Whoopty Fuck man.  I'm amazed that Loney hasn't been non-tendered twice by now.

- Look for the Marlins to go hard after Mark Buerhle if they can't get Pujols.

Winter Meetings-- Day 2

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.

12:40 PM ET-- Apparently the Pujols offer from the Marlins is above $200MM, according to Bob Nightengale.  A rough estimate of how the Marlins value Pujols, factoring regression due to age and inflation of the dollars/WAR relationship, assuming they view Pujols as a 7WAR player right now, and each WAR is worth $5MM:

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.

Breaking: Jays trade Nestor Molina for Sergio Santos

The Jays have a closer.  They have acquired Sergio Santos (two separate links there) from the Chicago White Sox for prospect Nestor Molina.  Molina has been ranked as a big shot prospect by a couple of people, including Kevin Gray, writer for some newspaper in New Hampshire, where Molina played this season.  Jury is out on this one, since people were really shitting their pants about just how good Molina could end up being, but others really think that he projects as a back-end starter, or simply as a reliever.  We'll see if there's more to the trade, or if this is it, but it looks like a 1-for-1.

Santos just agreed to a 3 year extension with the White Sox at the start of the offseason, so I'm wondering if the Sox are finally admitting that they need to gut the team and rebuild -- moving a relief pitcher for a starter prospect is a good start, I suppose.  Santos will make $1MM this year, $2.75MM in '13, and $3.75 in '14.  The Jays will then have 3 club options for '15-'17 worth $6MM, $8MM, and $8.75MM respectively.  Santos originally came to the Jays system in the Troy Glaus trade in 2005, when he was still a shortstop.  He was then waived in '08 and picked by the Twins, only to be granted free agency at the end of that year.  He was signed by the White Sox, and then traded for himself to and from the Giants, before being converted to a relief pitcher.  He then got good, striking out 13/9ip this season.

Molina had 148K's vs. 16 walks in 130 innings split between A+/AA this past season.  The Blue Jays have a lot of depth at SP, and there was eventually going to be a bit of a logjam once people started knocking on the door at the major league level, so I can live with this, I suppose... I just feel like it's a bit of an overpay for relief help.  Maybe there's something here that we don't know?  Or it was just over-hype?

Winter Meetings, Prince, Stuff

** I can't fucking keep up.  I think I'm just going to update a single post each day and live-ish blog everything major that goes down.  Obviously, pay attention to MLBTR, but anything Jays related or major will probably get something of a bit more substance.**

11:30pm ET-- Gregor Chisolm, beat writer for the Blue Jays, has a first hand day-in-review from the GM meetings over on Bluejays.com.  He says that it was a fairly quiet day for the Jays, and I think we should have all known that it was going to be.  AA said a long time ago that he doesn't really like doing stuff during the meetings because he doesn't like to work his magic away from his computer and stat sheets and whatnot.

At least we know that Prince Fielder isn't signing an 8 year deal in Toronto, so that's cool.  I think if anything major happens with the Jays, it might not happen until sometime later this week, or early next week, as opposed to at the meetings.  AA is pretty much an oddball in that respect though, so we might be able to see something huge happen tomorrow or the next day.  And let's not forget that just because AA doesn't say a single thing about specific players or deals, that doesn't mean that other teams will do the same, so the odd rumor that pops up tomorrow could be the real thing that just doesn't come to fruition completely until a few days from now.

9:30pm ET-- The 6-year offer to CJ Wilson is from the Nationals.  Expect a signing real soon.

9:00pm ET-- Still here... not much going on though.  Apparently the Reds interest in Jair Jurrjens has been overstated.  Other than that, it's been a pretty quiet couple of hours.  We might be done for the night.

7:00pm ET-- It appears the Twins are set to re-sign Matt Capps.  It also appears that the word "poo" is trending on twitter.  Tee hee.

6:30 ET--

•  The Brewers appear to be out of the running for Prince Fielder.
• CJ Wilson has a 6-year offer in hand, which an unnamed GM calls "Nuts".
• Billy Beane claims that he isn't fussy about moving Gio Gonzalez, which probably means that he'll move Gio Gonzalez.
• The Mets apparently want to keep David Wright, since they're completely in denial about being completely broke.
• The Dodgers and Jerry Hairston are discussing have agreed to a 2-year deal worth $6MM, because apparently the Dodgers don't have a large enough supply of utility men.
• DJF's Andrew Stoeten passes along some info from a guy at CBC, saying that the Jays are looking in to Octavio Dotel again, for some reason.  Ugh, pass.  If he's not going to be worth a draft pick next year then fuck off.

6:00 ET-- The link to Gregor's twitter also contains some quotes from AA, squishing rumors about the Jays' involvement in any big contracts.  I mean, we've already heard this like a month ago, but apparently we needed to be reminded.

"If there are players out there that are going to require [7-8 year] deals we probably won't be a factor for those players."

5:25 PM ET-- If the Angels sign Aramis Ramirez, as is rumored to be possible, expect the Jays to be in on Alberto Callaspo.  They apparently "really like him.  Really."

5:00 pm ET-- The Jays are unlikely do to anything regarding 2B until Wednesday, which is the deadline for players to accept or decline arbitration.  Johnson will more than likely decline arbitration and seek a multi-year contract, but he might just hope to rebuild value with a 1-year deal and hope to crush it next year.  Thanks to Gregor Chisolm.

4:00 pm ET-- It looks like the Jays have looked in to Mets IF Daniel Murphy, most likely as an option at 2B, though he really doesn't have much of a position, and doesn't offer much defensively.  He hit .320/.362/.448 last season in just over 400 AB's, and is under team control until 2016.  The Mets would probably want young, cheap players, or cash in exchange, since the owners of the team owe something like $1.7Billion in loans and bills over the next few years, plus whatever they're losing in the Bernie Madoff scandal.

It also appears that those pesky Rays are making a serious push for Josh Willingham, those fuckers, thanks to MLBTR.

2:30 pm ET-- The winter meetings are usually the time of the offseason where shit really starts to happen.  Well, actually, it usually right before the winter meetings, so as to stop other teams from signing free agents during the winter meetings.  As such, Jose Reyes and Heath Bell signed free agent contracts with the Marlins in the last few days.  My take on the Marlins losing their goddamn minds is up at Nowhere Plans, unless someone over there decides that I suck and don't know what I'm talking about between now and whenever you click that link.  If you like football or music, there might be some other stuff you may like over there as well, so check it out if you haven't yet.

Stuff
Fucking rumors everywhere you look.

Elsewhere, some idiot thinks that the Jays are the favorites for Prince Fielder, though Alex Anthopoulos, via Richard Griffin, shot that one down pretty quickly:

"From a media or fan standpoint, with me, if something leaks it's usually inaccurate."

Though apparently, Fielder isn't necessarily chasing the most money available.  If that means he'll take a 5-year deal with some club options, for some reason, from the Jays, I would be all for it.

Ken Rosenthal seems to think that the Jays really want Martin Prado and Jair Jurrjens... I'd be fine with Prado, Jurrjens not so much.  Frank Wren is pretending that he doesn't want to trade though.

The Royals would like to move some relievers for a starter, and AA has been linked to Greg Holland, because, you know, Greg Holland is a person, and AA is interested in absolutely everybody.  Holland was pretty awesome last year though.

 Ron Santo was elected to the Hall of Fame this morning.  Congrats to him.

There seems to be plenty of interest in Josh Willingham.  If the Jays were actually interested in David Ortiz, then I assume they'll also be interested in Willy.  I'd much rather Willingham to Ortiz to be perfectly honest.

Brad Mills: Get the Fuck!

You know who was the worst offensive player in baseball last year?  Jeff Mathis, catcher for the Angels.  Brad Mills just got traded for Jeff Mathis.  If Brad Mills thought that he was at all useful, this is sure to be a rude awakening.

Mathis and Mills are both fairly useless, and probably won't provide any value to their new teams.  Mills throws about as hard as I do and gets lit up by anybody who can handle a breaking ball, and Mathis is quite literally one of the worst hitters in the history of the MLB.  Mathis is actually projected to make $1.8MM in arbitration, so I wouldn't be surprised if the Jays just non-tender him and either try to re-sign him for like $700k, or just let him go and treat this as a Brad Mills DFA.

Basically, they took a gross looking greenish-brown piece of poop and traded it for an equally smelly, equally runny, but slightly more brown piece of poop.

I have no idea what this means for Brian Jeroloman, so don't ask.

Prospect Porn!, plus stuff.

John Sickels of minorleagueball.com just did a review of the Jays farm system the other day, and holy shit!  I knew that this was a good farm, but Sickels is actually kind of getting my hopes up.  Way up.  Like, "Friendly Giant" waaaaayy up.

The standard for Sickels' prospect list is to put in the system's Top 20, and then throw in a few honorable mentions.  For the Jays, he does a top-25, and then throws in another list of 15-20 honorable mentions, and exclaims multiple times that "this system is deep."  He also followed that post up with another today, so basically what I'm trying to say here is that he really likes this farm.

The list is here.  A few notes that catch my eye:

• There are no "A" prospects in the system (more on that in a minute), but that isn't really a big deal.  Sickels is a tough marker, and there aren't very many "A"'s anyway.  B+'s and B's are very good, and many become stars, especially the B's that are in the lower minors.
• Travis d'Arnaud as #1 doesn't really surprise me.  I'm more interested in his #2 ranking of Nestor Molina.  Up until now, based on everything I've read, only Kevin Gray is really high on Molina.  Keith Law sees Molina's ceiling as a #3-4 starter, and I think a lot of others do too, but the more people who wish to rank Molina really high on a deep system, the better it makes me feel.
• Anthony Gose comes in at #9, which seems a lot lower than most other lists.  He needs to improve his hitting, but "Grade A tools, Grade C+ skills, makes him a strong Grade B overall" sums it up.  Oddly enough, Jake Marisnick ranks #3 despite Gose being the much more commonly known name, most likely due to being much younger, but profiling similarly.
• Catchers AJ Jimenez and Carlos Perez rank at 10 and 21 respectively.  For the longest time, we've heard about how especially strong the Jays were at catcher, and that Perez and d'Arnaud project pretty similarly.  I'm not saying that this list crushes that claim, but Perez had a rough year this year, and d'Arnaud was excellent.
• Pitchers Noah Syndergaard, Justin Nicolino, Daniel Norris, Deck McGuire, and Drew Hutchison make up spots 4-8, with emphasis on the former three.
• Hechavarria probably isn't ever going to be what we originally thought he would.

Good enough for you?  Well there's more.  Today, he posted this link, answering some questions from the original link.  The highlights:

If he still qualified as a prospect, Brett Lawrie would be a pure Grade A, top of the Blue Jay list, and a Top Five prospect in baseball. He might even rank Number Two behind Bryce Harper, although I won't be able to answer that until I get all of my grades complete and the Top 50 list done.

Now I'm not going to pretend that I didn't already know that Brett Lawrie was something special, but

• We get a wordy explanation of how the rankings differentiate between the pitchers in the top 10, listed above.  We also find out that Henderson Alvarez would be among those guys if he were eligible.

Stuff

Jon Paul Morosi thinks the Jays should sign Prince Fielder.  I dunno, not crazy about it, but I'd rather him than Heath Bell.  It seems like Morosi is just going from team to team talking about who is interested and who should sign Fielder.

The Orioles traded for Taylor Teagarden today.  Nothing major.

The Cubs signed David DeJesus yesterday to a 2 year deal worth $10MM.  I think this is a fantastic sign, no matter what the plan is, in terms of whether they tear down the team and rebuild, or try to just spend and contend.  In a world where Aaron Hill gets 2y/11MM, we can be assured that Theo Epstein is a genius.

Apparently, if the Twins can't re-sign Michael Cuddyer, Josh Willingham has been discussed.  Which is weird, because Willingham is better than Cuddyer.  I'd consider going after the better player first, but that's just me.

Finally, thanks to Tango, the MLB announced that teams qualifying for the competitive balance draft, that is, teams who play in the smallest market or had the smallest revenues in 2011.

The teams that will be eligible for the first lottery are the D-backs, Orioles, Indians, Royals, A's, Pirates, Padres, Rays, Reds, Rockies, Marlins, Brewers and Cardinals.

 Ummm, what?  The Cardinals? The reigning World Series champions?  Competitive balance?  The D-Backs, Brewers and Rays all made the playoffs too, so maybe there's a slight problem with this.  I'm not saying that only non-playoff teams should be eligible for this, per se, but the fact that four of the 13 teams eligible for this competitive balance draft have made the playoffs this year (plus, the Reds made it last year, the Padres almost got there last year, the Rockies made it to the World Series a few years ago...), maybe a non-playoff clause would make sense?

Meanwhile, the Jays haven't been to the playoffs in 20 years, the Nats have been away from playoff baseball for even longer, and the Astros and Cubs have been a fucking joke since Bartman day.  Maybe market and revenue isn't the real problem.  There are some shitty GM's out there who have taken "big market" or "high revenue" teams, and have run them straight in to the ground, and some awesome GM's who have succeeded with no budget and no fans filling their stadiums.  I'm not particularly sure an extra sandwich pick is going to change a whole lot, especially with the new draft bonus regulations, but the execution here, much like the execution of everything else in the new CBA, is pretty flawed.

For Whom the Bell Tolls?

Heath Bell, being a douche.  Could he become our douche?

Ugh, don't get me started on this one.  MLBTR, via Ken Rosenthal, reports that the Jays are favorites to land Heath Bell this offseason.  Now, clearly, we're not going to exaggerate about this one, since the Jays are supposedly always the favorites to land everybody since nobody within the organization talks to the media, so there's a natural story to be made up around every corner, but I think we still need to comment on it, if only to touch base.

This is the part where I tell you why I don't want this to happen.

• Bell is probably going to cost somewhere around $8MM a season, and will pitch 50-60 innings a year if he remains healthy and effective. IF.
• He's going to be 35 years old at the beginning of the 2012 season.  That's old for baseball.
• He's been effective for the last several years, but has also done so in the pitcher friendly NL West, and more importantly, playing most of his games at uber-friendly Petco park, making a 91 point OPS difference between home and away over his career (though last year he was better on the road, albeit over an expectantly small sample).  There is a massive difference between the NL West and the AL East.
• There are better, younger closers out there.  If you're going to spend $8MM for Bell, why not just spend the $10MM for Madson?

Signing Bell certainly wouldn't be the end of the world, but we've seen first hand what the AL East does to imported closers; Jon Rauch was pretty effective throughout his whole career up until this year, and then put up an incredibly useless season in 2011.  I'm not saying that Bell and Rauch are the same pitcher or anything, but I really don't think that it's worth it to go sign Bell for multiple years when there are many other options to fill out the bullpen; options that don't have inflated values simply because they have a "closer" label attached to their names.  I'm talking about cheaper free agents, better free agents, trade candidates, and internal options who should probably make up the entire bullpen, especially now that a high majority of relief pitchers aren't going to be worth compensation picks at the end of the year.

The whole point of overpaying slightly for Dotel and Rauch last year was the fact that they could be turned in to something, either by trade, or by having them become draft picks.  Bell won't do that.  The system restricts it, he's not good enough, and he's too fucking old.