MLB Bullets is welcomed back

Good morning. I’m with Harold Reynolds. I totally think that “Hot Stove” on the MLB Network should be a musical.

• The GM meetings took place in California the past few days and Jon Paul Morosi has five things he found interesting from the meetings.
• Jon Heyman has ten storylines that are emerging out of the GM meetings.
• While there was only one trade consummated at the GM meetings, Mark Feinsand has ten players, both free agents and trade targets, who drew a lot of interest from the general managers there.
• The one trade that went down saw the Mariners dealing catcher Mike Zunino and outfielder Guillermo Heredia to the Rays for outfielder Mallex Smith. Each team also threw in a minor leaguer.
• Jeff Sullivan offers his thoughts on the deal. He thinks the Rays got the better end of the deal.
• Emma Baccellieri also breaks down the Mariners/Rays trade. She thinks the deal is more balanced.
• There’s a subplot to this deal in that Smith had a previous stint with the Mariners that lasted for all of 77 minutes in January of 2017. Earlier this season, when the Rays played in Seattle, Smith said some silly things on a Rays video like how his time with the Mariners were the best 77 minutes of his life and thanking Mariners fans for all the support he got while he was there. Now the Mariners have released a new version of that video welcoming him back to Seattle. Welcome back, your dreams were your ticket out. Welcome back, to that same old place that you laughed about. Mallex Smith is going to need a note from Theo Epstein’s mother sometime this season.
• One other thing that came out of the GM meetings is that MLB is going to look at ways to end the use of technology to steal signs.
• Next week, the owners are expected to give commissioner Rob Manfred a five-year contract extension that would run through the 2024 season.
• The Silver Slugger Awards were handed out last night and you may have seen that Javier Baez won one. That’s nice, but Red Sox J.D. Martinez became the first player in the history of the award (since 1980) to win two Silver Slugger Awards in the same season. Martinez won one for the outfield and one as a DH. You’d think there would be a rule against that. Anyway, that link also has a list of all the winners.
• Agent Scott Boras talked up his client, free agent Bryce Harper, and thinks that the pursuit of Harper is “historical.” Scott, Scott, Scott. It’s “historic,” not “historical.” It will only became historical many years down the line.
• Boras also went off on teams that tank, saying, among other things, that the Marlins put the “M-I-A” in Miami. That’s good. I’ve got to give him credit on that one. But seriously, MLS’s Inter Miami is starting in 2021 and if the Marlins aren’t competitive by then, that could be a big problem every summer.
• Buster Olney thinks that Boras OK’d the report that the Nationals had made a ten-year, $300 million offer to Harper at the end of the season. One, because it sets a floor for offers for Harper and two, as a favor to a Nationals team that he does a lot of business with. (ESPN+ sub. req.)
• Grant Brisbee makes some guesses as to where Harper might sign.
• Bob Nightengale says that “you can bank on” Harper signing with the Phillies. That cannot make Phillies fans feel good about their chances.
• Gabriel Baumgaertner examines the chances that the Yankees sign Harper and how he’d fit in the Bronx.
• Jon Heyman thinks that Boras wants to land a $500 million contract for Harper, which sounds like hyperbole to me. But read it and make up your own mind.
• The Dodgers are the latest team to suggest that they won’t exceed the luxury tax threshold through the 2022 season in a document provided to potential investors.
• Jack Baer doesn’t believe the Dodgers really think that and explains why.
• Jonah Keri suggests what the Mets should do this offseason.
• David Schoenfield has some general thoughts on the 2018-19 free agent class.
• Mike Axisa thinks that a lot of teams will try to sign free agent Marwin Gonzalez this winter.
• The Pirates re-signed Jung Ho Kang to a one-year deal.
• Kiley McDaniel looks at what would be a fair trade deal for Marlins catcher J.T. Realmuto.
• Here’s a list of all the “Super-2” players eligible for arbitration this winter. Carl Edwards Jr. is the one Cubs player on the list.
• Eno Sarris goes Victor Frankenstein and tries to build the perfect pitcher. (The Athletic sub. req.)
• Shifting gears a bit, baseball analytic godfather Bill James went off on Twitter saying that baseball players are overpaid and that they could all be replaced and that in three years no one would care. I get the econometric argument that James could be making here (I disagree with it, but I get it), but basically, it is the same cranky Bill James that is just getting crankier as he gets older. But you can’t say things like that when you’re working for the Red Sox.
• So the Red Sox announced that they do not agree with James’ “inappropriate” comments and that he is not and never has been an employee of the Red Sox. Which is one of those ridiculous technical differences without a distinction. If he’s not an employee, how come he has four World Series rings? (Or will in April.)
• The MLB Players’ Association also condemned James’ comments.
• The Giants had a memorial service for Hall of Famer Willie McCovey at AT&T Park.
• Sunni Khalid looks at the role that McCovey, Willie Mays and other minority players on the Giants played in shaping race relations in San Francisco in the late-50s and early-60s. A very good piece.
• Yankees catcher Gary Sanchez will have shoulder surgery.
• Braves shortstop Dansby Swanson had wrist surgery.
• An 84-year-old Red Sox fan picked some players numbers in the lottery and won $100,000.
• To honor Brewers outfielder Christian Yelich, the Milwaukee County Transit System renamed the number 22 bus line the “Yelich Line” for all of 2019.
• And finally, Astros third baseman Alex Bregman is a budding superstar in baseball, but that doesn’t seem to be enough for him. He also wants to be a YouTube superstar. But he also wants to help people. So he made a video where he left a struggling waitress a $500 tip for a glass of iced tea at a local Houston restaurant. I don’t know about this video superstar thing, but I’m all for Bregman going out of his way to help people. So good on him.

And tomorrow will be a better day than today, Buster.