Offseason In Review: November 2005 Highlights

Back in November, I realized my love of the Hot Stove League was spilling over too much onto RotoAuthority.  I still wanted to talk a lot of fantasy baseball, but I crave real baseball too.  I started up MLBTradeRumors, and it quickly dwarfed RotoAuthority in popularity.  It’s been a mix of aggregating known sources plus whatever info I managed to gather.  Let’s take a look back at November at some of the highlights in my first month.  Don’t worry, I’ll discuss the worst of it in a separate post.

Highlights:

Back on November 13th, I got my first one right.  I reported the Cameron for Nady swap as close to a done deal, and it probably put this site on the map.  Rosenthal backed it up two days later, and the deal was done on the 16th.

On the 17th of November, I got word from an interesting source that the Mets, Indians, and Cardinals had contacted Octavio Dotel’s agent.  The Cards’ interest was confirmed in the Post-Dispatch on the 19th.  I can’t recall whether the other two teams’ interest was confirmed in the major media.  A month later, my source told me that Dotel’s preference was the Yankees, and he signed with them later that day.

My source confirmed that the Giants offered Matt Morris a three-year deal on November 20th.  Morris sat on that one for a while, and received a lowball offer from the Cards on December 10th.  The next day, Morris inked the Giants contract.

On November 21st, my Mets source told me that the Mets would offer Billy Wagner a $40MM deal with the fourth year guaranteed after his tour of the city and he planned to accept it.  In a regrettable move, I relayed actual dates for the deal mentioned by my source.  I missed on the date, but Wagner signed on the 28th.  I’d call it a half-success.

I had a tip on the 28th that the Phillies were talking about an Abreu for Bedard and Gibbons swap with the Orioles.  I’m fairly confident that similar discussions occurred, though I can’t guarantee I had it first.

On November 29th, I extracted a detail on the Cubs’ initial contract offer to Rafael Furcal:  four years, $38MM.  Who would’ve thought he’d get more than that for three years?

Also on the 29th, a source gave me word of an exciting memo to Cardinals employees.  I worked with Viva El Birdos to piece together various scenarios, and the Cards’ interest in A.J. Burnett soon came to the forefront.   

I definitely didn’t break this one, but it wasn’t yet well known that Paul Byrd was in Cleveland to talk business.  In this case, all I did was pass along a Scout.com message board posting to spread the word.  Some useful stuff comes out of message boards occasionally.

We had some blunders in November, which you’ll read about later.  But all in all, it was an exciting and successful inaugural month.