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INDIANAPOLIS -- In a city known for its speedway, the pace of baseball's Winter Meetings this week was, well, slow. "The meetings have been productive," Mets general manager Omar Minaya said Thursday morning after the Rule 5 draft concluded and everybody in baseball made their way out of town.
"Ideally, you'd like to say you signed some free agents or made some trades. Across the board, GMs I've talked to say it was a slow meetings ... on the free-agent front and the trade-front."
One executive said there was "a lot of activity, a lot of conversations, a lot of creativity ... but the big boys are still on the board."
(Unless we count Peter Gammons going from ESPN to MLB Network.)
Roy Halladay is still in Toronto and Jason Bay, Matt Holliday and John Lackey are all still free agents.
Lackey and his agents may have been the biggest winners of the week. The (former?) Angels ace is by far the best pitcher on the free-agent market, and he has seen the contracts handed to Brad Penny (Cardinals, $7.5 million), Randy Wolf (Brewers, nearly $10 million per year) and Rich Harden (Texas, $7.5 million).
But at the top, there's a logjam. The Mets and Red Sox, and perhaps others, prefer to sign Bay for left field and can only prepare contingency plans until he decides. Holliday is represented by Scott Boras, who typically waits for the other free agents to sign so he can make sure to get the top contract.
Yes, there was the major three-team trade in which the Tigers sent Edwin Jackson to the Diamondbacks and Curtis Granderson to the Yankees. And the Rangers were able to move Kevin Millwood to the Orioles. But there are still pitchers being dangled, including Derek Lowe, Gil Meche, Joe Blanton and Aaron Harang.
And especially Halladay. Toronto is aware which teams it should talk to about Halladay, who has the right to veto any deal and thus can pick his destination. But the Blue Jays are looking for top-notch prospects with little or no big-league experience so they can keep them for an extended time.(One person in the know said Philadelphia, which looked at Halladay in July before getting Cliff Lee instead, has a "10 percent" chance at getting Halladay this winter.)
Once upon a time, general managers attended the World Series and began face-to-face discussions. Those would pick up at the GM meetings, and action would culminate at the Winter Meetings.
Now, with text messages and e-mails replacing rubbing elbows, the Winter Meetings have become another step along the way rather than a spot for consummation.
And the activity will continue into January as we wait for the big boys to find a home for the summer.
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