SAN DIEGO -- The baseball winter meetings are upon us, the annual gathering of executives, agents and reporters from the game in one place for five days. Since there is likely no bigger group of Bruce Springsteen fans than baseball writers, it is only fitting we use The Boss to recap the highlights so far from the first day at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego.
MLB winter meetings Day 1 through the eyes of Bruce Springsteen
The 2014 winter meetings are technically held on Market Place, but it might as well be E Street.
Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images
Atlantic City
The lyric: “Everything dies baby that’s a fact, but maybe everything that dies someday comes back.”
The first deal of the winter meetings was Jason Hammel signing with the Cubs for a second straight offseason, this time for two years and $20 million. Hammel began his 2014 season with Chicago, got off to a good start -- he was 8-5 with a 2.98 ERA in 17 starts with the Cubs and struck out nearly a batter per inning -- but was traded to the Athletics in July.
Now it’s the Cubs taking a gamble that Hammel, who averaged six innings per start for the first time in his career in 2014 and has never pitched more than 177⅔ innings in a season, can help stabilize a starting rotation in Chicago that ranked 13th in ERA and 14th in innings pitched in the National League in 2014.
Badlands
The lyric: “Poor man wanna be rich, rich man wanna be king, and a king ain’t satisfied, till he rules everything. I wanna go out tonight, I wanna find out what I got.”
This one goes to Jon Lester, who by most accounts is expected to make his decision at some point during the winter meetings, choosing between the Red Sox, Cubs, Dodgers and Giants. The first big name to fall off the free agent market, Lester could fetch north of $150 million, and we might know the team that will be paying him quite soon.
Lester talks nearing the finish line, sources say. Choice will be made no earlier than tonight, no later than tomorrow.
— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) December 8, 2014
Source: Lester decision looking like will be tomm.
— Rob Bradford (@bradfo) December 8, 2014
Thunder Road
The lyric: “There were ghosts in the eyes of all the boys you sent away.”
The Athletics completed their latest puzzling trade, sending power-hitting first baseman and outfielder Brandon Moss to the Indians in exchange for lightly-regarded minor league second baseman Joe Wendle. Moss joins third baseman Josh Donaldson, Oakland's best player the last two seasons, as now former A's, but at least Oakland got four players for Donaldson.
Moss, 31, was picked up off the scrap heap by the A’s and hit .254/.340/.504 with 76 home runs in the last three seasons.
Hungry Heart
The lyric: “Everybody needs a place to rest, everybody wants to have a home. Don’t make no difference what nobody says, ain’t nobody like to be alone.”
The centralized spot for the baseball media is the Grand Hall ballroom at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in downtown San Diego. This is base camp of sorts for everyone, able to get work done, fraternize, or hear an impromptu press conference announcing the latest deal, just off to the left.
Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
The lyric: “I know a pretty little place in Southern California down San Diego way, where they play guitars all night and all day.”
Sources: #Padres' talks with #Dodgers on Kemp "hot and cold." However, rival exec with interest in Grandal says SD "seems focused on Kemp."
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 8, 2014
The San Diego #Padres looming as the most likely destination for #Dodgers Matt Kemp, offering Yasmany Grandal and one other player to LA
— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) December 8, 2014
We now return you to your normally scheduled baseball programming, which may include watching a speed ball get thrown by someone.
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