Unlike next month’s Winter Meetings, not much of interest is likely to come from baseball’s GM Meetings taking place in Chicago this very minute. Brian Cashman, for instance, has basically said he doesn’t plan to do any business while he’s there, instead taking the opportunity to get a feel for the market. And free agents can’t be signed until November 20, anyway.
For the most part, the headlines coming out of the GM Meetings look like this: “White Sox Unlikely for Matsui.” (Well, okay then!) But even though the sexy trades and signings are still a couple of weeks away, just about any baseball news and/or rumormongering will satiate those already going through baseball withdrawal. For example, Ken Rosenthal’s got something about a maybe-being-discussed three-way trade that would send Luis Castillo to the Cubs, Lyle Overbay to the Mets, and Milton Bradley to the Blue Jays. (The Chicago Tribune has actually already thrown cold water on this one, because “Toronto reportedly wants no part of Milton Bradley.”) Unless you’ve been dying to find out whether Tim Wakefield would re-up with Boston (well, whaddya know, he did!), these little nuggets will have to fuel the Hot Stove for now.
Actually, the most interesting story to come out of the GM Meetings so far is this one in the Times that includes some details about the meeting place itself. It seems that baseball caught some flak for holding last year’s meetings at a luxurious hotel overlooking the Pacific Ocean in the middle of a terrible recession. So this year, GMs are congregating at an airport Hilton in Chicago, with views of the airport’s concrete parking lots. How scenic!