Food For Thought

For what it's worth, this dude was right about the Nady deal with Cameron despite expanding it to include Otsuka in some form later in day and kind of retracting what was originally said. The site is a rabid rumor site that posts a lot of stuff and should be taken with a grain of salt, but still interesting to say the least.

Thanks to John for the heads up.

Billy Wagner To Accept Four Year Offer Tuesday

A source in the Mets' front office is telling MLBTradeRumors.com that the club will make a four year, $40MM offer to Billy Wagner immediately following his tour of the city. The deal might be announced by Wednesday morning. Omar Minaya is eager to get a deal done early this week so that he can focus on numerous other player acquisitions.

Minaya will be employing the same bait he used to reel in Pedro Martinez: the guaranteed fourth year. The Phillies (smartly) refuse to pay Wagner $10MM for a season during which he'll turn 38.

Other sources close to the proceedings indicate that Wagner already had made his decision to join the Mets prior to his New York tour.

The moderator also posted a comment:

It was probably a little dangerous for me to put that "Tuesday" in the title, but it's still leaning towards being announced before Thanksgiving.

Now the only reason I'm even sort of believing this is because the Phillies failed to up their offer. It is possible they told him two guaranteed years is all you are getting, take it or leave it. If that's the case, then I believe it since the Mets are not going up against anyone else for his services and Wagner presumably wants to get it done.

That being said, if the Phillies will not improve their offer, why the fourth year? I'm not crying about the fourth if it needs to be included to get him, but did Wagner say fourth year or I'm going back to the Phillies to the Mets? Was the Philly option an easily obtainable vesting option? Not sure, but I hope this is true just so this is out of the way and the New York Mets will be a very, very attractive landing place for whatever free agents are left that the Mets are interested in.

Now if the Mets can start looking at Dotel to set him up the Mets could have a nice thing going between Dotel, Heilman, and Wagner that few teams would be able to match. I do not care how Dotel looked as a closer, he has one of the best sliders in the league.