Today is the first day of the winter meetings in Indianapolis. Everyone who is anyone in baseball has descended upon Indianapolis for four days. This is the peak of the hot stove season, and there will be rumors galore for most of this week. There will be a lot of news that isn't really news, so remember to take everything with a grain of salt. That said, this is a pretty exciting and fun few days.
Today's highlights:
- The Dodgers are shopping Juan Pierre, says Dylan Hernandez of the LA Times. Steve Henson of Yahoo says three or four teams are interested. Expect a pitcher with an inflated contract in return.
- George Sherrill is rumored to be on the block, says Ken Rosenthal and John Paul Morosi of Fox Sports. If the Dodgers are operating on the margins of their budget, this makes sense, as Sherrill will likely make as much as $4 million in arbitration, quite a high salary for a non-closer
- The veterans committee today elected manager Whitey Herzog and umpire Doug Harvey to the Hall of Fame today. Former players' union chief Marvin Miller was left out.
- Today is the deadline for players to accept arbitration offers from last week. All zero of the Dodgers offered arbitration are expected to do nothing. Actually, an intriguing story is that reliever Rafael Soriano may accept arbitration from the Braves. If he does, Soriano would combine with Billy Wagner and Takashi Saito in the best back end of the bullpen in the majors (if not a fragile trio).
For a good overview of the winter meetings, read this Fan Post by BHSportsGuy, who saw first hand last year's meetings in Las Vegas.
Mark Timmons of LA Dodger Talk is in Indianapolis and at the winter meetings. Be sure to check his site for updates.
This is the first winter meetings of the Twitter era, so the information will be fast and furious. If you want to follow True Blue LA on Twitter, go to twitter.com/truebluela.