Winter Meetings Recap: Nothing, Nothing, and…More Nothing

Silence.  That’s all that came from the Dodgers during baseball’s annual Winter Meetings held in Indianapolis this year.  Just silence.  No trades, no signings, nothing.  Just deafening silence.  Enough to drive a fan insane.  Empty rotation spots, a gaping hole at second, a bench completely devoid of help.  Just…silence.

The Dodgers’ problems are definitely not few and far between.  The divorce heard ’round the world is only off the front page because of another prominent sports figure’s alleged infidelities.  And while nobody in the front office wants to admit things have hit a rough patch, it’s difficult to suggest otherwise when the team declined to offer arbitration to seven players, including Type-A players Randy Wolf and Orlando Hudson.  Wolf is gone; the starter jumped ship to Milwaukee when the Dodgers displayed little to no interest in the San Fernando Valley native.  Hudson won’t come back, not after the treatment he received at the end of the season where he was benched without any notice.  And if the two make their departures official, the Dodgers receive no consolation prize: no players, no draft picks, nothing.  At least if they had offered arbitration, they’d either get two picks from another team or they’d fill an empty hole.  Unfortunately, the financial problems of Frank McCourt have handcuffed GM Ned Colletti and the entire team.

Rumors are abound about what the Dodgers want, but nothing about what they are actually doing.  Juan Pierre is on the trading block for a back-of-the-rotation starter, but the $18 million he’s owed over the next two years makes a deal unlikely.  A surprisingly active Winter Meeting left the market much more barren than before, with Rich Harden, Edwin Jackson, Andy Pettitte, Kevin Millwood, Brad Penny and Matt Lindstrom off the table.  The big-ticket players in John Lackey and Roy Halladay won’t happen, so don’t even dream about it.  Any deal for a free-agent would be incredibly cheap, most likely a one-year deal worth about $5 million plus incentives.  And with the activity that took place, no pitcher would settle for that until Spring Training approaches.  They may have even lost during the four day span, with Jamie Hoffmann getting plucked out of LA by the Yankees during the Rule 5 draft.

Get used to the silence, Dodger fans.  It’s going to be a quiet winter.