Saturday, Dec. 11, 2004
Winter meetings, posted at 9:24 a.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com This is my favorite sports weekend of the year, or at least it has been in recent years. I guess it was pretty cool when Michigan State made it to the NCAA finals, and it's tough to beat Opening Day, but this weekend - baseball's winter meetings - is one of my favorites.All the anticipation, the signings, the rumors... especially this year, when the "upstart Tigers" seem to be in the hunt for every single player on the market, from Pavano to Beltran. Sure, it's true that they could be being played like Tejada played us, to drive up prices, but it's also true that the Tigers have a solid relationship with Scott Boras, agent to Pudge Rodriguez as well as Beltre, Beltran, JD Drew, and Lowe. The Tigers are said to be contenders for all of those players, and Peter Gammons and Jayson Stark both predicted the Tigers would be the team to end up with Adrian Beltre.
Give us a third baseman, a center fielder, a starting pitcher, and another solid reliever, and we're World Series contenders. Give us three of those, and we're central division contenders. I'd be happy with Corie Koskie at 3B, JD Drew to fill a corner OF spot, and Matt Clement. But it appears Dave Dombrowski (GM) will only be happy with Pavano, and will look to Lowe (ugh) if he doesn't grab him.
Either way, I've played these scenarios out in my head for days, and check ESPN's page and the Detroit Tigers forum every moment I can to see if anything happened yet. This is probably the time of the year when I miss cable the most.
Go Tigers!