Day One rumblings at Winter Meetings
Day one of the winter meetings are nearly over in Indianapolis, and the Blue Jays are virtually in the same spot they were 24 hours ago.
Most of this information is based off of tweets from Jordan Bastian, but it sounds like Alex Anthopoulos and the Blue Jays crew are basically sitting back and letting other clubs come to them when it comes to trade offers for Roy Halladay.
“Jays GM is limiting the number of people in his suite for any talks. 1-on-1 or 2-on-2 discussions only. One way to limit leaks to the media.”
Note that this is almost the exact opposite strategy used by J.P. Ricciardi when he was shopping Roy Halladay at the trade deadline. AA wants to keep any potential deals close to his chest and not reveal them to the media unless they are absolutely certain a trade will be made.
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Speaking of Halladay trade talk, Sports Illustrated’s Jon Heyman claims that the Angels are back in the hunt for Doc:
“Angels will play for Halladay. But only if he’ll agree to sign long term. Joe Saunders possible bait.”
Any sort of decent player package including major league talent would obviously have to include some sort of contract extension negotiations for Halladay. Personally, I am not crazy about Joe Saunders – would much rather prefer someone like Jered Weaver or Ervin Santana, but the asking price is likely too high.
Finally, other piece of news that affects the Blue Jays somewhat – Rod Barajas is expected to decline arbritation from the Blue Jays. No real surprise here … the bigger surprise is the lack of talk from other teams about signing Rod Barajas.
As far as the catcher’s position is concerned, he provides a decent amount of pop, however clubs could be avoiding that .258 OBP like the plague.
Unfortunately, not much flash or drama from day one of baseball’s winter meetings – the big announcement that Will Carroll alluded to on Twitter over the weekend was that Bloomberg is going to be involved with stat tracking in MLB. It’s not necessarily mind-blowing news to the average fan, but apparently it will have a huge impact for those within the industry.
But there is supposed to be two huge anouncements right?hopefully the next one is a little more interesting.
Since the first announcement was a bit of a letdown, I don't expect the second announcement to be any bigger. In fact, I'd be surprised if we ever find out what the next one is actually supposed to be.
trade doc for bats! gone ones too. not those ones that break all the time.
haha. i meant "good ones"
So long as they get more than a box of donuts or a bag of baseballs for him, I'm all game for a Halladay trade.
AA is just staying firm on his asking price – so I don't expect a Doc trade to go down this week, but they might lay the framework for a trade in the coming weeks or months.