davell

Are we allowed to defer some of the money owed to Milton(given his permission, of course)? If that's possible, then hopefully they are at least looking into that avenue. It could possibly even maximize the return technically, just we would eventually be on the hook for most of the money, which is better to me than currently being on the hook for it at any rate......I hate all these backloaded deals, but if we could spread this thing out some, maybe it would give us some flexibility(especially if we get a GM who's MO isn't backloading every deal he does in the future) since we will have some contracts falling off the books in the near future and also hopefully will have some young guys giving us cheap production here shortly as well......

I think the Cubs are literally "open" to trading Bradley for anything with a pulse and a salary equal or less than Milton......

Yep, this is going to be just like the Sosa offseason all over again....... Hendry and Co are throwing out mystery teams and who knows what else to try to get ANYONE to jump the gun here. It is pitifully desperate on their part. And Hendry is probably hating the fact that once he actually gets someone to bite, he then has to go to Ricketts and tell him we're going to eat basically all or most of Bradley's contract. Being on thin ice to begin with, you know he's dreading this, once it happens......But, if Seattle denies a Bradley for Silva rumor, what exactly are our options(other than keeping him, which we should do, but won't). It wouldn't shock me to see teams waiting it out, to see when we DFA him. Everyone knows what kind of hole we've dug here, so why would anyone actually try to bail us out?

How teams evaluate players has always fascinated me, but I just read that the Tigers asked for BOTH Ellsbury AND Buchholz for Granderson. If that's indeed true, how did they settle for what they did this quickly?

If Westbrook's progression from TJS is progressing well(it seems like he SHOULD have pitched at some point in 2009, doesn't it?) he'd be an interesting return for Bradley actually.

Medium well :D) On a side note, if we wind up with freaking Silva out of this crap, I hope Hendry is fired within the hour.

Put me in the group that feels that if Bradley doesn't get dealt at the meetings, then this is going to take a very long time to get done.......Hendry has worked on this nonstop since the season ended supposedly and originally we were thinking that that this would be done BEFORE the meetings started. Now, the longer it goes, the more it's starting to look like Sosa to me anyway.......And the fact that this very well could handcuff us from any other moves, makes it even worse.

And then you beat me to the Price comments. :D

As we all know, their will be tons of rumors going around over the next few days obviously and until something is done, we really don't know who to believe. Ed Price from AOL FANHOUSE tweeted a little while ago that the Yanks-Granderson talks are lukewarm at best, because the Yanks won't include Austin Jackson......Hopefully this guy is right, because if all we have to beat as the main piece of a deal is Austin Jackson, we can certainly do that, without including Castro. Of course, we don't know(even if this guy is right about the rumor) that Jackson is the MAIN piece either........Gotta love the winter meetings.......

I truly don't see Castro getting dealt. Hopefully, they lower their demands some though.

With Lowe's contract, I'm not so sure the Braves would need anything else from us honestly. I'm just not thinking the Braves would want anything to do with Milton though.

For Meche to happen, it wouldn't surprise me if we STILL had to send money over AND a prospect or two as well. (one of our plethora of young relievers, Fuld- type guys). At any rate, this has been by far the most intriguing option brought up to this point anyway.

I keep getting the feeling we're going to trade for Burrell and get hosed both there and when we have to flip him. My guess is this: Bradley to Tampa for Burrell.......We pay for Burrell's deal and send Tampa 7 mill. Making it 2-14 for Tampa with Bradley, as far as what they are responsible for. Eventually, after Holliday, Bay, and others sign, we send Burrell and one of our young bullpen guys to New York for Castillo. We send them a mill in that deal too, to help offset the salaries this season. And unfortunately, I think I'm taking about the BEST scenario out there. If Hendry does better than this, I'll be surprised.

I'll be shocked if Boston actually winds up giving up a 1st for Scutaro. My guess is they will give up a 2nd or 3rd, once they sign some other guys who are ranked higher than Scutaro. And then, they will go after overslot guys in the draft to make up for their lack of high draft picks......Epstein is smart like that......

While I agree completely that it's WS or bust for Hendry this year(hopefully Ricketts sees it this way too), how much credit does Hendry get for helping the Trib open up their purse strings over the time since he's been here? Granted, he's not spent wisely, but until he got here, we definitely operated differently......Just curious what people think.

I totally agree with you, but we have to be careful saying something good about Hendry around here. Hendry has lots of faults, but trading is probably his single biggest strength...... It certainly is... but only when he chooses the right attributes to be focusing on. Nolasco, Pinto, and Mitre for one year of Juan frickin Pierre will forever haunt me. Yeah, that one by far was his worst. I guess, in a way, it's good to have a blip like that on your record though. If not, other GM's could get wary of dealing with you possibly. But, it was BAD, without a doubt. The only other ones I can think of off the top of my head, were the Juan Cruz trade to Atlanta for that Pratt guy that made Ankiel look like a control pitcher. And the Maddux-Izturis debacle. Which I still wonder what prospects the Dodgers may have offered instead of Izturis...... And I guess tehcnically anyway, that Josh Hamilton was traded by us for cash, but I don't hold it against Hendry(as we weren't going to take him in the Rule V anyway, although it would be awfully damn nice to have him right about now obviously).

I'm reasonably intrigued by Morla. His numbers were pretty darned good last year. Need to find out more about him, though, as that's pretty much all I know at this point. I had glossed over his numbers and missed his K/9 honestly. Consider me reasonably intrigued as well, making the deal even a tad better than I had originally thought. :D

I totally agree with you, but we have to be careful saying something good about Hendry around here. Hendry has lots of faults, but trading is probably his single biggest strength......

Morla doesn't seem like much obviously, but Gray and Spencer straight up for Fox honestly doesn't seem too bad to me, if that was the entire deal. To lose Miles' and only have to pay a mill of his 2.7 is pretty damn strong as far as I'm concerned. Pretty good deal, all in all really......

If there is no new CBA agreement and we have an uncapped year, there will be very few free agents out there, as guys who are supposed to be free agents after their 4th year(ie Marshall) will now have an extra two seasons with their current team. Plus, teams will receive an extra tag to use as well......Basically, this is going to be one of the worst free agency classes ever, if we don't come to a new agreement and that seems unlikely at this point.

I tend to agree with the folks who think Bradley's exploits didn't impact the team's play all that much......Baseball is too individualized for it to have made that big of an impact. Football and Basketball I could definitely see as being different, but if Bradley is standing on 2nd base with two outs, I don't think for a second that Aramis or anyone else would be thinking "hey, this guy is a jerk, I don't want him to score right now, not with ME up to bat" or Theriot thinking "hey, I better drop this relay, so Milton doesn't get an assist right here"......Just doesn't seem feasible. These guys all have jobs to do and I don't see how, being a professional and all, his antics can really affect someone else's ability to perform. Even a headcase like Z isn't going to go out there thinking about Bradley and not thinking about getting someone out that he's facing at that time. It can't be quantified obviously, but I don't see it being something that's going to turn our team into anything other than whatever it is either. Not better, not worse, just gives some guys something to talk about with each other before the game is all, if they hate him that much. But, once the game starts, it's time to make due with what you've got. And if that happens to be a very talented malcontent, that makes you a better team than whatever his replacement would, I hope Hendry decides to keep him. Hell. if you keep him this year and he has a decent season, but everyone still hates him, trade him then. His value would be more and we'd have to pay less to get rid of him then anyway and it'd probably give us more flexibility as it is, moving forward.

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see his comments about everyone, if there's one thing I think we DO HAVE at this point, it's depth. I think we can make a case at this point that we have upside throughout our entire top 30, which definitely hasn't been the case recently. Castro is overhyped right now, but partially it's because he's had ZERO hype up until about a month before his season ended. And very little even then up until he tore up the AFL, which put his prospect status in a new perspective from almost everyone's eyes. Maybe Goldstein isn't biting.(and that's fine, not everyone has to love the kid) I mean, he's 19 and held his own in AA and tore up the AFL, but there's probably some team's out there that have the same opinion of him that Goldstein does. In the end, I don't care if Castro is top 5, 25, 50, or 100, because it looks like he's our SS of the future and possibly the present as well. We're not trading him, in all likelihood, so his trade value or prospect ranking doesn't even truly matter, other than for bragging rights in some of the publications possibly.

New article up on MLBTRADERUMORS says he can be had. He'll still be relatively cheap, he's young, and he's pretty damn good. I'm sure Florida would need to be overwhelmed for him, but I'd definitely be on the horn to see what they may be wanting anyway. I hope Hendry is looking into this, at any rate.

From what I've read, he supposedly wants a 2-3 year deal at 8 mill per......

We signed a Catcher named Willson Contreras this year to supposedly an 850,000 bonus actually. Although, I'm pretty sure he's going to miss 50 games for testing positive for PEDS next year.