With the winter meetings just about a week away, we’ve entered the first big off-season lull. There’s not much that’s going to happen in the next seven days, I don’t think, though there are a few odds and ends to pick up that I missed over the Thanksgiving holiday.
The Pirates offered Derrek Lee arbitration on Wednesday, but not Chris Snyder or Ryan Ludwick. That’s all pretty predictable stuff; Lee is the only one of the trio the Pirates would have any reason to want back and he’s also the least likely of the three to accept. Assuming he signs elsewhere, the Pirates will get two compensation picks (one for Lee, one for Doumit) in the 2012 draft before Type B compensation goes away forever.
In the same vein, the Cubs offered Carlos Pena arbitration, but Jon Heyman says he’s unlikely to accept because he wants multiple years. The “he wants multiple years” part is why the Pirates should be staying away here, in my opinion.
The Astros finally fired Ed Wade last night, now that their sale to Jim Crane is complete. The Astros are leaving the division and I don’t really bear them a ton of ill-will, so I don’t begrudge them a decent GM, but the Ed Wade Era in Houston has consistently been one of the funniest running subplots in baseball and I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t miss it a little bit. As Dejan Kovacevic pointed out on Twitter last night, Neal Huntington is now the second-longest tenured GM in the NL Central behind Doug Melvin.
