December Baseball

While there is no baseball actually played in the month of December, the GMs and agents sure have a grand old time trying to do best for those that they represent.  General Managers have the duty of finding the right pieces to the puzzle that will make their teams successful at the lowest price possible.  Agents try to squeeze the teams out of that stance to have their clients get what they believe to be a proper valuation.  In the end some deals get struck and many go on wondering what the future will hold.  With the Winter Meetings and the Rule 5 Draft behind us, the baseball landscape is much more clear than it was in November, but is still much work to be done.

Dominic Perilli has done an excellent job highlighting some of the more popular signings during the Winter Meetings period.  But you did not need this site to take you far into the depths of the wheeling and dealing between popular agents, their more popular clients, and the all important General Managers.  More than one-thousand media credentials were handed out to press members at the Winter Meetings.  If you wanted to know what Scott Boras was eating for breakfast, I am sure some newspaper was covering it.  $45 sandwiches aside, a lot of moves were made.

And while the media was sensationalizing the Winter Meetings (even after they had commenced), a little thing called the Rule 5 Draft occurred.  If you are lucky enough to be selected in the Rule 5 Draft, you must be added to your new team’s 40-man roster.  This year, a whopping twenty-one players were taken in the Major League portion of the draft (first and second round) and only one guy was grabbed in the Double-A section (Andrew Barb to the Orioles).  The Nationals organization, which has two strong Dynasty clients in Dan Leatherman and Kyle Gunderson, had two right hand pitchers scooped up by other teams in the Triple A phase: Luis Ortega and Josh Perrault.  They added one, Terrell Young, in the Major League phase.  This, along with other moves made by the club in the past year (dealing pitchers for position players), will hopefully open up opportunities for our boys to rise up the ranks in the coming year.