Big Day [Infamy In Progress]

Before we muddle around in the hyperbolic quagmire of wild speculation, complicit dissemination of misinformation planted by "MLB sources" and irresponsible rumors that is the aftermath of the Winter Meetings, let's all take a moment to join hands, bow our heads and pray to Josh Hamilton that Joey's final day as a student goes well.  Our little buddy has two exams today, his final two final exams of his educational career and the final hurdles to be cleared before he wields a degree from SMU Cox School of Bidness.

OK. Now pray. PRAY for Pete's sake.  It's the least you can do.  

Get on with it.

Also, it's Pearl Harbor Day.  

Also, it's the day that Michael Young ceases to be a Ranger.

Also, it's the day that Zack Greinke becomes a Ranger.

Also, it's the day that Josh Hamilton ceases to be a Ranger.

Also, it's the day that Justin Upton becomes a Ranger.

Or not.  Except the parts about Joey's final exams and Pearl Harbor. Those things are real.

What I love most about the Winter Meetings is that every person connected with baseball descends upon one giant Baseball Biosphere and every baseball reporter on Earth follows these "MLB sources" around (except Parks, who just stalks Verducci) day and night, praying, begging and pleading to be the first to be fed misinformation so that they can be the first to Tweet it to the world.

And in spite of the fact that all of these sources and all of these reporters are all jammed together into the Biosphere with one another for days on end, no one - not a single one of the reporters - ever seems to be right about anything.

You and I can sit on our couches and make up tweets about crap that we dream up in our baseball heads that are every bit as likely to turn out to be true as any one of the horde of reporters who are embedded in the Baseball Biosphere.

An example?  Two evenings ago while lounging comfortably on my plush, luxurious and stylish couch in toney North Dallas, I issued a smart alecky tweet about setting the over-under on how much of the $16 million owed to Michael Young the Phillies would pay at $6 million.  I did this because I just seen six or seven tweets appear simultaneously about how the Yankees were supposedly kicking the tires on Young and I figured that it had to be a plant, probably from the Rangers. No one had "reported" the Young-to-Philly thing yet. 

About 10 minutes later, I got a text from an "MLB source" saying that I was probably off by about a million (I pointed out that I was taking the under) and shortly thereafter, the "story" actually broke.

So yeah, I accidentally broke the Michael Young / Philadelphia "story" from my couch in Texas by issuing a snarky tweet.

Here's another wild-ass guess that has exactly as much chance of becoming true as anything that has been "reported" so far about the multi-team cluster-F that Jon Daniels has supposedly cooked up: Daniels and Tampa's braintrust of GM Andrew Friedman and President Matthew Silverman are working together, conspiring to hold up everything in an effort to get Tampa overpaid (if that's even possible) for David Price without Texas having to do the overpaying, and the stooges in all of this are Zack Greinke, Jerry DiPoto and Kevin Towers (who waits for Daniels to give in and send him Jurickson Profar for Upton). 

What if Daniels knows that Texas has Josh Hamilton in the bag already for three years, $70 million or somesuch. What if he really wants to come away from all of this with David Price and a catcher, not Greinke and Upton?  Does Daniels simply want to hold up Greinke to discourage the Angels and force them to move on to Kyle Lohse or Anibal Sanchez, thus assuring that Greinke leaves the AL?

Since when did Daniels signal his intentions to the point where reporters are issuing missives that he is "maniacal" in his pursuit of someone as they have done with respect to Upton?  

Arguably, the Rangers biggest hole is at catcher. Why is it that you didn't hear one single peep about the Rangers and a catcher this week? 

How can it possibly be that there aren't four or five teams dying to get their hands on Mike Olt given the pathetic state of the 3B market?  Did you read any hot Mike Olt rumors this week?  No. None other than he has been offered to Arizona and Arizona doesn't want him.  

Are you really buying it that Daniels controls a player like Olt in a situation like this and isn't working feverishly to leverage that asset? Are you really buying it that Daniels didn't spend an enormous amount of time and energy exploring the catcher market?  

No and no.

Daniels and his crew have always been masters at disguising their intentions. Get tied on because the week you have spent being teased with possibilities based on rumors floating out of the Baseball Biosphere is, more likely than not, nothing but a mirage. The one thing you can be pretty sure of is that Daniels is up to a helluva lot more than he's let on and more than half of what he's let on is nothing more than an attempt to manipulate the market and bend it to his will.