Stoking the Stove

Rumors, rumors everywhere. It’s the Hot Stove season in baseball, which means that everyone relieves the boredom of the off-season (which is only occasionally punctuated with actual news) with wild and crazy trade and signing talk.

Right now, the hot rumor in Cardinal camp is Jason Marquis and Anthony Reyes for the Phillies’ Bobby Abreu. This one started taking form after it was reported that GM Walt Jocketty sent around a memo reporting that anyone that leaked any information on what they were working on would no longer be employed by the Cardinals. (Don’t know if that went for leaking that memo as well.) This was first discovered by the guys at mlbtraderumors.com and was analyzed well by Viva El Birdos, a solid Cardinal blog.

VEB today breaks down why it’s much more likely the “big news” is the signing of A.J. Burnett instead of an Abreu trade, and the rationale makes a lot of sense to me. I’m a big Abreu fan, but I wasn’t sure that the Cards wanted to get rid of 40% of their rotation, including their cheap, talented prospect in Reyes, for him. I’ve always thought the idea of signing Burnett and trading Marquis for someone like Austin Kearns was more of what Walt was working on. Whether that’s true or not, we’ll find out. GMs meet next Monday, and leading up to those meetings could be a flurry of signings and possibly some trades. No matter what, the rumor mill will be working overtime for next couple of weeks!

With all this and other reports floating around, it looks as though the Cardinals will not be getting Brian Giles. I was really thinking he’d be a great addition to the club, with his ability to get on base and his power batting in front of Pujols, Edmonds and Rolen. However, the braintrust wants to go a different way, apparently, so we’ll trust they know what they are doing. (All this and more discussed every day at CardsClubhouse.com, BTW!)

Benjamin’s spots still haven’t cleared up very much. We’ve also found that Benedryl does not calm him down, but does more of the opposite. Isn’t that fun? We’re going to give him a couple more days before taking him back to the doctor. He most of the time doesn’t seem bothered by them, so I don’t know if they aren’t itchy or he just doesn’t let it get to him.

Starting to work toward getting the house in shape for our traditional Christmas Eve Open House for our church. I’ve made up a schedule of things that we need to do and when they need to be done to have the house actually presentable by then. (It’s a pretty good size list, unfortunately!) So far, we’re staying on schedule. We’ll see if we can keep that up through the next month.

If you are looking for Christmas music this time of year, check out Point of Grace’s first Christmas album, A Christmas Story. I can listen to that one over and over this time of year. They’ve put out a second Christmas album this year, but I’ve not had a chance to get it yet.

If it’s anything like it is here where you are (20 degrees this morning!), stay warm!