The winter meetings start tomorrow in Las Vegas.  Most attendees are already in Vegas or are arriving today.  The meetings end with the rule 5 draft on Thursday.  Often the meetings are anti-climactic as teams discuss trades but don't pull the trigger until weeks later.  the Jays are expected to be quiet.

Proving that he's willing to trump news even from his own clients, Scott Boras today leaked the fact that Monday, Greg Maddux will announce his retirement from major league baseball.

A decent argument can be put forth that Maddux has been the greatest starting pitcher in major league baseball history. Where would you rank him?

John Sickels has a Blue Jays Prospect Discussion Thread up, and will post the Jays Top 20 in the next week.

milb.com has been doing their Top 50 this week, and the top 10 is set to come out tomorrow. By process of elimination, it should look something like (this is my guess of what it will look like, not what my top 10 would look like, not that I know enough about prospect evaluation to come up with a legitimate list)...

Jays owner Ted Rogers died at his home last night.  He was 75.

From The Globe: "He was this country's version of Steve Jobs, a technology entrepreneur who was down but never out, who unabashedly loved gadgetry, who had a huge, resilient ego, who made life hell for his executives but could evoke great loyalty–and who triumphed over naysayers to become the second wealthiest Canadian with a personal net worth estimated at more than $7-billion."

The Star also has a photo tribute.

R.I.P.

Figured this hasn't received a thread, so why not? What better thing to get debates going than the good ol' HOF.

November's not over yet! Quite!

So we spent some time this week discussing who should be each team's "Mr. Franchise" (the full discussion is in this thread) and given the results, tried to fill out a full standard-Hall-of-Names 25-man roster.

The lineup and bench were no problem -- four legitimate Hall of Famers didn't even make the roster... but the pitching staff runs short. We have only seven arms available, five more Hall of Famers, one who certainly will be in six years or so, and another -- well, as you'll see, a projection, at best.

So how can we make this team better? Note that four of the six listed as not making the team all played primarily the same position, OF, with three primarily in RF alone..

Can we fill out the pitching staff somehow? Your thoughts ...?

News updates - the Toronto chapter of the baseball writers handed out their awards yesterday.  At the ceremony Paul Beeston addressed the media with bad news about the 2009 payroll.  The baseball winter meetings start in just over a week.

We all know that when you hear a reference to "Mr. Cub," that's the one and only Ernie Banks. So he's this team's starting shortstop. Or maybe first baseman, we'll see. What are we going for here? Well, we have 30 teams in the big leagues, and a standard Hall of Names roster includes 25 players plus a manager, sometimes some coaches, maybe an owner or a mascot -- you get the idea.

What kind of team can we build of players who were their franchise's equivalent of Banks? That requires two steps, and who knows, possibly some heated arguments (which is always fun). First, we have to identify everyone from Mr. Brave to Mr. Mariner, all the way from Atlanta to Seattle. Then, we have to see if our list can make up a legitimate roster. To that point, a few rules ...

There has been some recent suggestions that the Blue Jays will not increase payroll for next year.  The newspapers are full of bad economic news every day and Bud Selig recently had Paul Volcker talk to the baseball owners about the economy.  In 2009 the Jays will likely see headwinds from the economy, from the value of the Canadian dollar and from loss of sponsors such as GM.  What does it all mean?

Jordan Bastian reports the Jays have set their 40 man roster.  Ricky Romero, Robert Ray and Luis Perez were added.  Les Walrond and Angel Sanchez have been removed.

This thread now contains news of the announcement of the 2008 American League Most Valuable Player. Dustin Pedroia? A-Rod? Morneau or Mauer? Carlos Quentin? Josh Hamilton? Francisco Rodriguez? Cliff Lee?

Update: Pedroia wins

Who should have won? And why?

And we all breathe a big sigh of relief.

The first couple of standard projection methods have come out so lets start seeing what our 2009 Blue Jays might look like.

Baseball America publish their top ten prospects today, followed by a subscriber chat this afternoon.  Thanks are due to mylegacy who has reported the top ten from the actual paper which has already been mailed to subscribers.