Fox Sports is reporting that Brian Tallet has been signed by the St. Louis Cardinals. In addition tonight is the deadline for free agents who have been offered arbitration to accept or reject the offer.
John Paul Morosi, via twitter, reported that Tallet will sign with the Cardinals. No terms were disclosed but Tallet will be used as a reliever by the Cards as they have five solid starters.
With tonight being the deadline for arbitration acceptance the big question is will Jason Frasor accept? Kevin Gregg; John Buck; Scott Downs and Miguel Olivo appear to be locks to reject arbitration.
Finally, this year the process for arbitration has been moved up by a couple of weeks. When the winter meetings start next Monday the clubs will know who has accepted or rejected their arbitration offers and that will give them a clearer understanding of their needs. Some observers believe that this will lead to more wheeling and dealing next week. We will see. Expect to see a lot of uninformed speculation about the Blue Jays plans for the winter meetings over the next few days.
Finally, Theo Epstein was quoted today saying the following:
“Generally, I’d rather fill them through trades,” Epstein said. “When you make trades, you tend to capture players who are closer to the prime of their careers, and [you] are paying through the acquisition cost for future performance. In free agency, often times you’re paying for past performance. That said, we’ll probably do a little bit of both. Ideally, you’d have a surplus of everything, and you can make trades and fill all your needs and stay out of the free-agent market. But that’s not the reality.
“The reality is free agency is a necessity at times for teams that try to compete every single year. Also, when there’s elite players available in free agency, that’s a great way to acquire talent. Because then you’re getting an elite player and you’re not surrendering your best young guys to get them.”
When I saw that quote I thought of my interview with Alex Anthopoulos. I beleive Epstein and AA have the same belief in this area. AA, like Epstein, said he prefers trades to free-agent signings and he said it is tough to get value from free-agents. This should make for some fun trades over the next couple of weeks.
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20101130165306181