Printer-friendly

Contact Author

December 2, 2007

Every Given Sunday

Grand Ole Opry

by John Perrotto

NASHVILLE--The last time the winter meetings were held at the sprawling Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Resort, in 2002, this is how boring they were: The biggest transaction of the second day was the Pittsburgh Pirates hiring Frank Velasquez as their strength and conditioning coach. While Velasquez is a fine fellow, he isn’t the reason nearly every baseball journalist converges on the winter meetings each December. Certainly, fans awaiting news from the confab expect bigger dispatches than the hiring of a fitness guru.

“I think it’s the atmosphere here,” Oakland General Manager Billy Beane said then in explaining the lack of activity in baseball’s visit to Music City USA. “This complex is so big that it is its own biosphere. It’s like a different universe. It’s just not conducive to making trades.”

That could change this year, though, as executives from around the game will begin to converge on the Opryland today, with the winter meetings officially set to start Monday and run through Thursday morning’s Rule 5 Draft. The Johan Santana sweepstakes appear ready to play out to a conclusion here, with the Yankees and Red Sox both vying to get the left-hander from Minnesota. The Marlins will continue to shop Miguel Cabrera, and Beane will step up his dangling of Danny Haren in trade talks.

The tone has already been set thanks to several big trades in recent days--the six-player swap between the Twins and Rays that included potential superstars Delmon Young and Matt Garza, and the Mets sending Lastings Milledge to the Nationals for Brian Schneider and Ryan Church. Meanwhile, every agent in the game will be patrolling the various Opryland lobbies, attempting to peddle a lukewarm class of free agent clients to the assembled GMs.

All in all, it should be an interesting four days. Here is a look at where all 30 clubs stand from a trading standpoint at the start of the meetings: