There were other things happening at the Winter Meetings today other than the Angels offer:
Cito Gaston talked to the media. Jordan Bastian posted about that (and other things). On Rzepczyski:
"Rzepczynski, if he can come back and pitch like he did, I mean, his record might not show how well he pitched, but if you go look at what guys hit off him, he had a great year for us as far as I'm concerned, and hopefully he's going to be part of our rotation coming up this year."
Nice to see he looks past the won/loss record. He talked to Dusty Baker about Alex Gonzalez:
"Well, you know what, I was talking to Dusty earlier today, and Dusty likes him a lot. He says he's a good player, plays hard, likes to play," said Gaston, who then smiled. "We can always fall back to Johnny Mac."
Oh please, let's not fall back on McDonald. Cito also said Marco Scutaro called him today to thank him, very classy and that he figures Jose Bautista will be leadoff man "as things stand now". Bautista doesn't hit right handers at all, so I hope not. I had been thinking that he would be non-tendered. We will find out Friday.
In other news, Canadian Rich Harden is to sign with the Rangers, one year at $6.5 million with a mutual option for another year at $11 million with a $1 million buy out.
The Red Sox are interested in Mike Cameron. I think that would be a good pickup for them, they could move Ellsbury out over to left and improve their defense a lot. Also the Red Sox are trying to trade Mike Lowell to, well anybody, but are talking to the Rangers. They are also talking to free agent Adrian Beltre.
And the Rule 5 Draft is tomorrow morning. Jays have the 11th pick and Anthopoulos has said there are a couple of players they are looking at, since the team isn't figuring on competing this year they could carry a Rule 5er for the season. But with Johnny Mac on the roster too, that wouldn't leave much room for backups that could help us much. Johathan Mayo at MLB.com has a list of players who could be picked up.