Winter Meetings

Two other baseball briefs, eight on ballot for Hall of Fame.

Retired managers Dusty Baker, Bruce Bochy, Joe Madden, and Lou Piniella are among eight men on the ballot for the Hall of Fame's Contemporary Era Committee for Managers, Executives, and Umpires that meets on December 6th at the Winter Meetings in San Diego.

Former general managers Sandy Alderson and Brian Sabian also are on the ballot, along with the late Atlanta Braves owner Ted Turner and former player, broadcaster, and National League president Bill White.

The haul announced Monday.

And retired managers Dusty Baker, Bruce Bochy, Joe Maddon and Lou Piniella are among eight candidates on the Baseball Hall of Fame's Contemporary Era Committee ballot for managers, executives and umpires.

The committee meets December 6th at the Winter Meetings in San Diego.

Candidates need 75% of the vote for election.

Finishing now with

potential salary cap and salary floor that the league has never really had, that other major leagues in North American sports do have, and that the owners are really pushing for as a way to control their costs.

And in some ways, we'll get into the potential benefits and pros and cons of that system but that is in the air and then uh the rule if there is no lockout we get a full rule 5 draft even if there is a lockout we get a minor league phase of the rule 5 draft which frankly uh doesn't really do much of anything we try to we try to get hype for minor league guys that can move back and forth but those guys very rarely uh amount to anything so uh I think, of course, we'd love there to be a traditional winter meetings to cover ourselves.

But in the events of this, with the timing of this, if the lockout goes into place, that'd be the week before the winter meetings were scheduled to take place.

So that means the winter meetings themselves, the big meetings that usually attract a lot of media coverage, including from FOF, that those would be canceled for this offseason.

So we still have some time between now and then for us to cover stuff.

We'll continue getting you updated on everything that's going on, including those anticipated transactions in the next few days.

Well, here's the thing about the Saul Alexander of John Small, like Kevin alluded to.

Other than the Hall of Fame part, this looks like a win-win situation for both because Somebody from the Dodgers many years ago at the 81 Winter Meetings, I think it was El Campanas that told me this, because I ended up eating with the Dodgers sometimes at the baseball Winter Meetings.

You ever been to the baseball Winter Meetings? You talk to tons of people.

There's three ways to judge a trade, the immediate, the middle, and then the long term.

They were the Major League owners.

And they made those decisions at the annual winter meetings that year in San Francisco held at the Palace Hotel December 1st to December 7th.

Now, very importantly, why do the owners of Major League Baseball teams make decisions together about the game and how it's played? money money not fairness not balance money and bob gibson was not costing anyone money in fact his cardinals had not only just won the last two pennants but st louis set an all-time new franchise attendance record in 1967 and nearly matched it in 1968.

in fact They topped 2 million fans each of those years, which broke the 1966 record of 1.7 million.

Yeah.

Okay.

Do you want to know what else happened at the 1968 winter meetings?

Absolutely.

They absolutely stole their best hitter, Junior Caminero, from Cleveland in a November 2021 deal for Tobias Myers.

They got Yandy Diaz from Cleveland, too, in a three-team deal at the 2018 Winter Meetings.

They grabbed their elite starter, Drew Rasmussen, from Milwaukee in the famous Willy Adames trade six months earlier.

This postseason, we even saw the ultimate trade narrative come full circle with starter Freddy Peralta.

Whatever it may be, it might be between the ears, I don't know, but he was able to fix what was wrong to get him to this point.

The Rays also rounded out their roster by acquiring key contributors like Liam Hicks, Brian Baker, Victor Mesa Jr., Tyler Wells, Richie Palacio, and Johnny Deluca via trades.

And to top it off, they mined the Rule 5 draft at the 2022 Winter Meetings to grab reliever Kevin Kelly from the Rockies.

He went on to lead all of Major League Baseball with 33 holds this season.

Uh, it was just hilarious.

Um, the, um, the time he was covering the, the, the Winter Meetings in New Orleans and he comes back at the wee hours of the morning, he asked for, like, a 7:35 wake-up call, and he was informed, "Mr.

Roysey, it's already 8:45," [laughs] you know, things like that.

That was just, that's what made Pat Pat.

He brings so much knowledge about the game, and he has such a huge amount of enthusiasm for the game of baseball as well, uh, that he would be a big shot of energy in the broadcasting booth for the White Sox while being also incredibly knowledgeable.

And I nickname him the Mayor of the Winter Meetings because everyone gravitates and everyone in baseball talks to Mike.

Everybody knows Mike.

If the White Sox hired Mike Ferrin, uh, they would get a huge round of applause from everyone around Major League Baseball.