SAN DIEGO — It’s all about the schmooze.
The Winter Meetings have begun in earnest (at the Manchester Grand Hyatt) and that means four days of lobby-trolling, around-sniffing, attempted eavesdropping and rumour-trading among the baseball media assembled from all across North America.
Before the annual baseball convention was an hour old, the first trade came down – Oakland continuing its roster reconstruction by dealing Brandon Moss (the guy who homered twice in the A’s eventual wild card loss to Kansas City) to the Indians for minor-league second baseman Joe Wendle.
There may or may not be a lot of trades to come before the event comes to a close around 1:00 p.m. ET Thursday with the conclusion of the Rule 5 draft, but a lot of teams are certainly going to try.
Those Royals have an excess of fantastic bullpen arms, and are looking to replace departing starter James Shields and outfielder Norichika Aoki; so don’t be surprised to see them move one of Greg Holland, Wade Davis and Kelvin Herrera.
The Red Sox have a lot of holes to fill as well, and have both a starting outfield of Hanley Ramirez, Jackie Bradley, Jr. and Yoenis Cespedes as well as a complete back-up outfield of Daniel Nava, Rusney Castillo and Allen Craig (not to mention Mookie Betts and Shane Victorino). There will be trading action from the Bostons, no doubt, to fill their holes on the mound.
The Winter Meetings tend more to be about the free agent process than the wheeling and the dealing, however, because player agents have all the game’s decision-makers in one place and it’s their best chance to get as much face time with as many people as possible.
The Orioles have not only lost a pair of outfielders so far this off-season in Nelson Cruz and Nick Markakis, they’ve also lost two of the only three guys to have played more than 141 games for them in their division-winning 2014 season.
They’re hemorrhaging, and it’s hard to imagine they won’t spend this week in deep conversation with agent Peter Greenberg in an attempt to get Melky Cabrera to head to the land of the crabcake. They’ll get stiff competition from the Seattle Mariners on that front.
Also, expect the Jon Lester talks to heat up. Will the lefty return to Boston after they insulted him at the all-star break with a $70 million extension offer that will wind up being worth about half as much as the ace may eventually obtain? The Cubs are hoping the answer is no, and that his next home will be Wrigley.
As for your Toronto Blue Jays, they will (as always) be linked to everyone. They’d love to have one of those Royals’ relievers, but after already having traded J.A. Happ, Kendall Graveman and Sean Nolin, they no longer have the starting depth to feed the Royals’ needs, so they’d have to get creative.
Of course, that’s not out of the realm of GM Alex Anthopoulos, who has worked extra teams into deals to get what he wants in the past.
Anthopoulos has said they’d like to add speed and depth, both for bench strength and so as not to simply hand jobs to Justin Smoak (first base) and Ezequiel Carrera (fourth outfielder). Among the names the Blue Jays could consider as competition for those positions – old friend
Emilio Bonifacio, Mike Carp, Jason Kubel and Daric Barton.
At some point over the next three days, every big-league manager will sit down with the media for a half-hour chat session. Blue Jays’ skipper John Gibbons’ turn comes on this first day. He’ll hang with us at 6:30pm Eastern, and many nuggets are sure to come forth.
Before that, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum will announce who (if anyone) will become an honoured member from the Golden Era ballot, chosen from players who were prominent from 1947-72.
The Meetings continue…..