Winter Meetings Notes: Giants, Beltran, Astros

With the Winter Meetings just around the corner, here's the latest on what we can expect to take place..

• An executive told Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus (via Twitter) last night that this weekend was much busier than most pre-meeting weekends with lots of teams bargain hunting.
• The Giants aren't expected to be big spenders, writes Andrew Baggarly of the Mercury News.  The club won't seek the offseason's elite free agents or make an aggressive push to re-sign Carlos Beltran, but they will look to fill-in some gaps at reasonable prices.  Baggarly writes that they are after a right-handed hitting middle infielder such as Alex Gonzalez or Jerry Hairston Jr. and an outfielder such as Josh Willingham or Coco Crisp.
• In a piece for ESPN.com (Insider req'd), Jim Bowden runs down the situations facing the "new" GMs at the Winter Meetings.  In total, there are six GMs who have just signed on with their respective clubs as GM and one interim GM in the Astros' David Gottfried.
• An agent with prominent clientele told ESPN.com's Buster Olney (Insider req'd) on Thursday that he's gotten less phone calls in recent days as clubs are simply waiting to get things done face-to-face at the Winter Meetings.  Last year, the meetings provided tons of surprises including the Zack Greinke trade and Jayson Werth's seven-year, $126MM contract deal with the Nationals.