Uncategorized News & Rumors

Wow, who knew 35 year-old reliever LaTroy Hawkins would be such a hot commodity?

• It started when the Rockies decided on October 31st that Hawkins was not worth a net of $3.5MM for one year.  In hindsight that might’ve been one to exercise.  The Rockies still hope to sign Hawkins but for one year.
• The Tigers have had preliminary dialogue with Hawkins’ agent, with a two-year, $7MM deal the demand.  Detroit has backed off on Octavio Dotel and expect David Riske to finalize his deal with the Brewers soon (the Crew had interest in Hawkins before getting Riske).  As for Jeremy Affeldt, the Tigers have "mild interest." 
• The Yankees are another team known to be targeting Hawkins.  Troy E. Renck throws the Rangers into the mix as well.

UPDATE, 11-30-07 at 10am: Troy E. Renck of the Denver Post has more on this situation.  The Rockies got in touch with Loretta’s agent recently but weren’t optimistic on getting a deal done.  While Loretta is close with the Yanks, he will let the Rockies’ second base situation play out before signing because Colorado is his first choice.

FROM 11-30-07 at 8:40am:

Ryne Crabb of The Transaction Guy writes of a Buster Olney radio report wherein the Yankees were said to be close to signing Mark Loretta.

Before we punch Robinson Cano‘s ticket to Minnesota, remember that the Yanks have liked Loretta in the past as a first base and/or backup infield option.  It may be as simple as that.  To his credit, Loretta posted a .352 OBP last year (though he was awful after the break).

Eric Breier was kind enough to write a piece about MLBTR for the North County Times yesterday.  We received four out of five mouses, which seems pretty solid to me.

Eric’s constructive criticism:

– There’s no readily available information on the site administrator. You can e-mail some guy named Tim, who presumably is running the site. Normally, this wouldn’t be a big deal, but since this person is giving a lot of opinion on the baseball rumors being posted, it would be nice to know his credentials. Is it some baseball-loving grandmother in Maine, or could it be Jack McKeon trying to relive his "Trader Jack" days?

– It would help if the time and date of the postings was a little more prominent.

Eric is right on both counts.  I will have to work on his second suggestion, but the first one shouldn’t be too tough.  I need to create an "about page" so people know who’s cranking out these rumors.  In the meantime, here’s a few paragraphs about me and the site.

MLBTradeRumors.com came about in November of 2005 – you can read about its origins here.  My name is Tim Dierkes.  I’m 25 and married to a wonderful woman named Agnes (good story about how we met, maybe another time though).  Agnes and I just bought a house in Roselle, IL.  I have a full-time job outside of MLBTR.

I am just a regular guy who enjoys writing.  As you can see here I prefer to do it in a conversational style rather than anything formal (I was a business major at UIUC, so I don’t have any special journalism or writing skills.  Favorite book is Catcher In The Rye by the way).  The one topic that I’ve always been obsessed with is baseball hot stove.  As a lifelong Cubs fan it’s often been more interesting than the regular season.  So I combined the two into a hobby, and accidentally helped fill the MLB rumor niche on the web.

While I’m always trying to grow my own network of sources, the vast majority of rumors here come from published sources.  The breakdown might be something like 90% newspaper articles, 5% radio reports (only ones I heard myself or got from trusted readers), and 5% trusted blogs and my own sources.  There are a handful of blogs that, in my mind, have established credibility for the occasional legitimate rumor.

So think of MLBTR as an aggregator of all worthwhile trade and free agent baseball rumors (and a filter of all the crap).  I hope you will also find my analysis and the commenters’ debates and insight to be entertaining.

Happy Thanksgiving to all MLBTR readers out there.  I really appreciate your readership and comments.

I’ll be away from a computer for most of today, but if you happen to catch a good rumor in between bites of turkey feel free to link to it in the comments of this post.  Either I’ll look at it more in depth later tonight or Joe will post about it tomorrow.

Here are today’s odds and ends before I head off to my poker game tonight.

• The Padres have had "cordial and informative" talks with free agent Mike Cameron.  The talks sound pretty low level right now.  According to Cameron’s agent, the Nationals, Rangers, and Cubs also like him.
• New stuff from Rosenthal.  Melvin Mora would waive his no-trade clause for the Phillies or other nearby teams, and would also move to left field if need be.  Problem is that Mora would be below average at either position and has roughly $16MM left on his deal.
• Rosenthal adds that Salomon Torres, Damaso Marte, and John Grabow of the Pirates are drawing plenty of interest.  Marte is garnering the most.
• The Astros signed Geoff Blum. Woo-hoo? 
• The Phillies really did make a four year, $50MM offer to Mike Lowell despite all they said to the contrary.  So all bets are off as to whether they’ll spend money on non-pitchers.
• Drays Bay interviewed Andrew Friedman.  Nice score for the blogging man!
• This link is in Japanese – apparently the Hanshin Tigers would like to acquire Detroit Tiger Marcus Thames.  How they would arrange for that, I do not know.
• I linked to this article before, but keep getting emails about it.  Apparently the Giants’ willingness to unload Bengie Molina is catching readers’ eyes.  That should come as no surprise – the Giants should be willing to ship out all of their veterans.  And the catching market is shrinking a bit.
• Per South Side Sox – the White Sox have designated Scott Podsednik for assignment.

You might ask yourself where all the rumors where this afternoon.  Unfortunately even rumormongering must be put on hold at times.  I just finished attending two closings – one for the sale of my condo and the other for the purchase of my house.

Tomorrow is the big move, so posting here may be erratic for a couple of days.  Thanks for your patience.  Now it’s time to catch up a bit.

SI.com’s Jon Heyman took a stab at guessing the contract lengths and amounts for 21 top free agents in yesterday’s column.  They’re very solid predictions.

There are a few predictions I disagree on slightly.  Scott Boras client Kyle Lohse is predicted to get three years, $24MM.  Personally I think some team will talk itself into going for a four-year, $36MM deal with him.  Mike Cameron I believe can now be had for two years instead of 3/21.  I would’ve agreed on two years, $8MM for Kaz Matsui, but it sounds like the Cubs are crazy enough to offer him three years.

Take a look at Heyman’s column and let us know in the comments where you differ.  Speaking of predictions, don’t forget to play Hot Stove Hysteria.  By the way if you already posted your entry but want to edit it, feel free to post a new one.  Your official entry will be your last one submitted, and the contest ends at midnight CST on November 12th.

Omar Minaya is considering many options in his hunt for a #1-2 starter.  Ben Sheets and Johan Santana we’ve already discussed today.  Who else is on the radar?  Ken Davidoff has the latest.

• Many of the trade options you’re already familiar with: Joe Blanton, Jon Garland, A.J. Burnett, Dontrelle Willis, Jose Contreras, and even Erik Bedard and Jake Peavy.  This group varies in number of years under team control, health, and ability. 
• Davidoff notes that Omar Minaya had dinner with the Indians’ Mark Shapiro Tuesday night.  It sounds like the Tribe isn’t looking to move pitching, so Cliff Lee may be off the table.
• These guys are less than #1-2s, but the Mets have interest in Carlos Silva, Kyle Lohse, and Hiroki Kuroda as fallbacks.  Adam Rubin has a Mets insider who says they aren’t keen on Livan Hernandez.  Steve Popper believes Jason Jennings may be considered, as he was a year ago when the Astros were shopping him.
• Interestingly the Mets checked in on Brad Lidge but wouldn’t part with Carlos Gomez or Fernando Martinez for one year of him.
• Strangely Davidoff says the Red Sox are in the lead for Kuroda.  There’s already talk of a six-man rotation; how would the Sox accomodate one more starter?  I haven’t seen the Yankees connected to Kuroda at all.  My guess is that they’ll pass on him simply because Kei Igawa and Hideki Irabu didn’t work out, rather than judge him on his own merits. 

Many options were declined tonight, though none were unexpected.

• The Dodgers passed on Mike Lieberthal for $1.5MM.  He only got 77 ABs this year and wasn’t worth it.
• David Riske had a $2.9MM player option.  He declined it given his stellar 2.45 ERA in 69.2 innings this year.  He’ll get a nice Bob Howry/Jamie Walker type of deal for three years.
• The Royals took a $1.5MM buyout rather than pay Odalis Perez $9MM.  It was a nice gamble at the time but they don’t need him for ’08 at effectively $7.5MM.  His season ended with a knee injury in late August.
• Darin Erstad got a lot of love in the Chicago press but he wasn’t worth $3.5MM to the White Sox.  He gets a $250K consolation prize.
• Mike Myers for $1.1MM – nope.  The Sox tried him and he was terrible. 

Through the recent reader survey, I’ve noticed that some people have problems logging in to comment or registering.  I use a system called TypeKey for commenting, because it comes with my blogging service.  If you’re having problems logging in or registering, here is their contact form.  Right now that’s the best I can offer.