Baseball Beat

-I promised you stuff on Tom Glavine and here it is. For those of you Nationals fans that were hoping Tommy Glavine would forgo returning with the Braves in order to try and reunite with long time Braves president Stan Kasten in Washington, think again. After reading about all that went down between Kasten and Glavine in John Feinstein's excellent "Living On The Black", their relationship is not as close as one might surmise. As Braves team president in 2002, Stan Kasten was heavily involved in the talks with Tom Glavine on a new contract. Feinstein described the negotiations between the two sides, particulurly between Glavine and Kasten, as being of "genuine anger". Glavine felt he deserved a four year deal, and the Braves were only willing to go up to three, along with ignoring deferred payment due to Glavine.

-Not that the Nationals would even want to fork over the money to get Glavine, and potentially sell some season ticket packages. Washington, so far this offseason has refused to sign free agent LF/1B Adam Dunn, in a move that makes gobs of sense for the Nationals. The only way the Nationals won't lose one hundred games this year is if they increase their offense, and the easiest most sensible way to do that would be to sign Dunn. Alot of people used to talk about the Nationals parkway rivals, the Orioles, of having confederate money. Well the National's may very well have confederate money, but we'll never know if they refuse top flash it. 

-The Arbitration hearing I'd most like to sit in on: Milwaukee Brewers second baseman Rickie Weeks. Just how much do non-partial arbiters award a player in arbitration for "tools" and "untapped ability"? I would guess not much, and thats why Weeks and his agent better scramble to get their preferred $2.8 million number closer to the Brewer's preferred $2 million number. The good news for the Weeks camp: Since Doug Melvin became GM of the Brewers in 2002, the Brewers have not had one arbitration hearing.

-Say what you will about GM Dayton Moore's tenure in Kansas City. He did right by avoiding arbitration with right handed starter Zack Greinke and signing him to a four year $38 million deal. The Royals have been very patient with the twenty-five year old Greinke, as he's battled through mental disorders and an experiment as a closer. Not that they had a choice: Right now, Greinke is looking like the gem of former GM Allard Baird's haul, and that is pretty rare in itself.