MLB Bullets has nothing to report

I wanted to make this a separate article, but Al had a different plan in mind. But I didn’t want all my hard work to go to waste, so here’s the entire article I wrote.

Cubs Winter Meetings Recap:

The Cubs didn’t do anything at the Winter Meetings.

OK, so now it’s on to your regularly scheduled MLB Bullets.

• The Cubs weren’t the only team that didn’t do much at the Winter Meetings and Tim Keown looks at what did happen, what didn’t happen and why so little news was made.
• David Schoenfield has some ideas about how to make the Winter Meetings more interesting.
• Matt Snyder reports that some baseball executives are open to the idea of a trade deadline at the end of the Winter Meetings to try to liven things up.
• Here’s a handy list of all the transactions that did happen at the Winter Meetings.
• Tom Verducci has a Winter Meetings recap and what did and did not happen.
• R.J. Anderson grades each team’s Winter Meetings. A lot of incompletes.
• Mark Feinsand looks at where the free agent market stands after the Winter Meetings.
• Jon Heyman tries to make sense of all the rumors surrounding free agents Manny Machado and Bryce Harper at the Winter Meetings.
• Bill Baer notes that while the market has been slow, those that have signed have gotten the big money that they were expecting and that’s good news for the sport, especially with the upcoming labor talks.
• Tim Brown agrees that it’s the sign of a healthy sport when teams like the Rays and the Reds make a big splash at the Winter Meetings.
• There was one big three-way trade between the Mariners, Rays and Indians to end the Winter Meetings. Carlos Santana and Edwin Encarnacion were the biggest names involved in the deal.
• Jeff Sullivan breaks down all the players involved in this three-way trade.
• Do you remember when former Cubs general manager Jim Hendry signed free agent pitcher Ted Lilly from the hospital? We got a sequel to that story this year as Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto finished that three-way deal after being hospitalized for a blood clot.
• Rays first baseman Jake Bauers went from Tampa to Cleveland in that trade and he and his good friend Willy Adames are very sad that they won’t be teammates anymore.
• Here’s a rapid-fire list of the deals that did happen. The Yankees re-signed pitcher J.A. Happ two a two-year, $34 million deal with an option year.
• The Rays signed pitcher Charlie Morton to a two-year, $30 million deal. The Rays? Yes, the Rays.
• Jeff Sullivan evaluates the deal and what the Rays can expect from Morton.
• Pitcher Lance Lynn agreed to a three-year, $30 million deal with the Rangers.
• The Reds acquired pitcher Tanner Roark from the Nationals for pitcher Tanner Rainey.
• The Brewers have traded for pitcher Alex Claudio from the Rangers for a competitive balance draft pick.
• The Mets signed reliever Jeurys Familia to a three-year, $30 million deal. Familia had been a Met until he was traded to Oakland this past July.
• The Dodgers have agreed to a three-year, $25 million deal with reliever Joe Kelly.
• The Angels have signed first baseman Justin Bour.
• Richard Justice looks at seven teams that are likely to make a move soon.
• Looking forward, Will Leitch looks at the current state of the market for free agent Bryce Harper.
• The Yankees might not sign Harper because as GM Brian Cashman said, the Yankees are already “a fully functional Death Star.” Yeah, but what happened to the Death Star?
• Bryan Hock looks at what the Yankees might still do before Spring Training.
• Craig Calcaterra is puzzled by Yankees fans who call Cashman a “failure” because the Yankees have only won one World Series since 2000. He defends Cashman and decries the attitude of “one winner and 29 losers” in a piece he calls “Championships are overrated.”
• Agent Scott Boras had his usual colorful press availability during the Winter Meetings and Gabe Lacques translated what he said into plain English and explains what was important and what you can ignore.
• Grant Brisbee designed this wonderful random Scott Boras metaphor generator for you to play with. “My client is like a stove pipe hat that invokes a grifter. You don’t want him to pull a sled filled with winter supplies, not even for a second.”
• Brisbee also wrote an uncharacteristically serious piece for him about how MLB’s attitude towards gambling has changed over the past few years from hostile to friendly.
• Bradford Doolittle reports that MLB managers are strongly opposed to any new rule banning defensive shifts. (ESPN+ sub. req.)
• Jonah Keri looks at what the Red Sox need to do this winter to repeat as champions in 2019. Not much, apparently.
• Keri also looks at the Orioles offseason efforts and says the good news is that there is nowhere to go but up.
• At least one unnamed MLB executive says that catcher Bruce Maxwell can’t find a new team because of his previous kneeling during the National Anthem.
• There’s a kickstarter campaign to get a set of Negro League bobbleheads made. Do you remember those old “Starting Lineup” figures from the nineties? I have a Josh Gibson one.
• New Hall of Famer Jayson Stark talks about his love of baseball and writing.
• Do you eat a lot of food at the ballpark? Are you squeamish? Then you may not want to read this piece by Paula Lavigne and Sandra Fish about health code violations at stadiums and arenas.
• While the media pays attention to deals and rumors, a lot of the Winter Meetings is just a convention and trade show, just like any other industry would have. That led Emma Baccellieri to write this piece about the people who design, manufacture and sell mascot costumes to baseball teams.
• The Red Sox wanted to get into the spirit of giving, so they delivered a bunch of pizzas to the Yankees. The Yankees didn’t want them so the Red Sox ended up giving them away to random people on the streets of the Bronx.
• And finally, America’s greatest short-filmmaker, Andrew McCutchen, is on the move to Philadelphia. McCutchen celebrated his new team with a new installment in the “Rocky” series.

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