2018 MLB Winter Meetings: Day 3

The biggest headline of Tuesday’s Day 2 activities at the Winter Meetings was probably the signing of Andrew McCutchen by the Phillies to a three-year, $50 million contract. Other Tuesday moves included the trade of Ivan Nova to the White Sox and the Royals officially announcing they had signed Billy Hamilton to a one-year deal with a mutual option for 2020.

And then there was this announcement:

We covered that here last night, only to find out...

Ken Rosenthal and Joel Sherman both stated that they stand by their reports. The Orioles have been somewhat of a tire fire in recent years, so why would this be any different? And if you think my description of the team in Baltimore is unfair, our colleagues over at SB Nation’s Orioles site Camden Chat basically said the same thing:

That would seem to settle that, except this is the Orioles we’re talking about, and it seems “Orioles weird” is still going to carry over into the tenure of GM Mike Elias. Orioles.com beat writer Joe Trezza described the atmosphere of Elias issuing a denial of the report even as the suite television was broadcasting MLB Network’s breaking news banner of the hire. This is straight out of a comedy script.

Anyway, it’s 7 a.m. in Las Vegas at the time this article is being published, so we likely won’t hear more about this for a couple of hours or more. When all is said and done, I expect that Hyde will, in fact, be the next Orioles manager. You’d wonder why anyone would want to dive into that mess, but there are only 30 MLB managing jobs and it’s an honor (not to mention a likely pay increase) to get one. Best of luck, Brandon. You’re going to need it.

Of course, that hire means the Cubs will need a new bench coach:

Obviously, this would be a popular move with the fanbase. It would probably be a popular move with Cubs players, many of whom played with David Ross during the 2016 World Series run. But as Jordan Bastian notes, there are a lot of factors in play.

If there’s Cubs news on any front during the day Wednesday, of course we’ll have a separate article or articles on that.

Joe Maddon made a splash during the manager news conferences Tuesday, first with his jacket:

Then with talk of continuing as Cubs manager:

Then on the Cardinals’ acquisition of Paul Goldschmidt:

And then, just to wrap things up:

(Which is, in fact, a real book.)

Lastly, for those of you who saw the story about a “mystery owner” flying to Las Vegas to meet with Bryce Harper...

The Winter Meetings essentially end today; Thursday’s activity will be the morning Rule 5 draft, after which everyone makes a mad dash to the airport. Josh will have a Rule 5 draft preview later today.