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It's never great when the guys making the biggest headlines at the winter meetings are the agents.
It's slightly better when the agents are making headlines because of parking lot fights.
While it remains unclear who the men were, context clues from two witnesses to the altercation indicated that the fracas, which featured at least one kick, a handful of wild haymakers and intervention from both a local sheriff and hotel security, happened after one player agent accused another of trying to poach a client. [...]
There was lots of yelling and pushing, including the angrier man upping the ante significantly when he said, according to the witnesses, "I’m gonna burn your [expletive] house down!" One of the men, said the witness recording the video, seemed to be apologizing – and then threw a punch to restart the fracas. The video, with the two men fighting in the distance, shows some scrapping, one man throwing a kick and the other winding up for a punch a la Super Macho Man in Mike Tyson’s Punchout.
Otherwise, Scott Boras held court in his tremendously irritatingly entertaining way. He gave his clients some press, criticized the Cubs' business operations, and said the Rays should move to Montreal, called Billy Beane "the master of goulash." You know. The usual.
Neither of these things have anything to do with the White Sox, but they have a lot of great words and images in them.
Here's some White Sox stuff: Adam Eaton spoke through a medium besides Twitter for the first time as a member of the Chicago White Sox, and Scott Reifert has a transcript. A couple of the more interesting points:
Pertinent!
*He adopted Rick Hahn's "dirt bag" label while hoping his game compares to Lenny Dykstra and Kenny Lofton. It's cool to see the latter referred to as "scrappy," but it's logical that he comes to mind for Eaton, who grew up an Indians fan.
*He's aiming for a .300 average, an OBP around .400 and 100 runs scored. Hopefully this prediction turns out better than Jerry Owens' 65 steals.
Major League Baseball is preparing to eliminate home-plate collisions. Details haven't been fleshed out, but it will probably include reinforcement of the "can't block the plate without the ball" rule, restrictions on blocking the plate with the ball, and something like a targeting rule for baserunners.
It's probably a good thing, although A.J. Pierzynski kinda convinced me in October that catchers can protect themselves well enough by knowing their limitations. Either way, Tyler Flowers says he thinks a rule change won't really come into play all that often because the play isn't all that common to begin with.
A couple strange GM statements potentially out of context.
Amaro: "Kendrick has 64 wins. You know how many wins Garza has? 67."
— Matt Gelb (@magelb) December 11, 2013
.@Cubs GM Jed Hoyer:"We’re not ready to make a big splash-I think the @Mariners are a good template.Hopefully we’re there in a couple yrs."
— MLB Network PR (@MLBNetworkPR) December 11, 2013
Now let's get pumped for the Rule 5 draft.
