When Jason Kendall gets $4.25 million guaranteed from the Brewers you know there's not many catchers available this offseason.

The Toronto chapter of the Baseball Writers of America have released their 2007 award winners. Roy Halladay was named pitcher of the year; Alex Rios player of the year; Jesse Litsch top rookie; and Dustin McGowan most improved player.

This article in the Sun again mentioned the Jays retaining Josh Towers.

Per ESPN.com:

Major league pitcher Joe Kennedy died early Friday morning while at home with his family in Florida, agent Damon Lapa confirmed to ESPN.com.

The cause of Kennedy's death could not immediately be determined, Lapa said.

Update:  A Fox Sports headline through Google said: "Pitcher Joe Kennedy died early Friday, apparently from a brain aneurysm, according to a major-league source."  However, since then the headline and text of the article omitted that detail

After a visit to the Hardball Times I saw that today was the deadline to finalize the 40 man roster for this year's class. The Jays 40 man roster is currently full.

NYY 3B Alex Rodriguez is your 2007 AL MVP.

It was not a unanimous selection, as the Tigers' Magglio Ordonez took two first-place votes. But really, Maggs, you had a nice year ... MVP-worthy in some seasons. But not this one. Outside all the Boras shenanigans, A-Rod was the best player in the AL -- make that the best player in the big leagues! -- last seaon, and this hardware only validates that.

LATE ADD: PHI SS Jimmy Rollins named 2007 NL MVP.

Future Hall of Fame lefty Tom Glavine agreed to an $8 million, one-year contract with the Braves yesterday, returning to the city he always called home even while pitching the last five years in New York.

Glavine has 242 of his 303 career wins with the Braves, including five 20-win seasons. The 242 wins is fourth on the all-time franchise list (Smoltz and Maddux are fifth and sixth, respectively) and just 26 wins behind Phil Niekro's all-time Atlanta record.

What else is going on?

The Blue Jays acquired Marco Scutaro from the A's for minor leaguers Graham Godfrey and Kristian Bell, as JP Ricciardi completes another trade with his old boss.

The Jays claimed St Louis minor league OF Cody Haerther yesterday and added him to the 40 man roster.

And Ricciardi claimed the Jays weren't going to make major moves this offseason!

Thanks to melondough for the tip.

You may know Joe Nuxhall's name as the youngest person ever to play major league baseball -- as a wartime replacement player in 1944 at the age of 15 years, 10 months, 11 days.

You may even know his name as that of a two-time All-Star pitcher in the 1950s and winner of 135 big league games -- sort of a left-handed Rick Wise.

Me? I'll always remember the sound of Nuxy's voice ...

You can make a pretty good argument that current Tiger ace Justin Verlander is the greatest player in major league history with the initials "J.V." -- you might get some protests from Joe Vosmik, Johnny VanderMeer, Jose Vidro, and in a few years, maybe Joey Votto. But for now, it appears that the not-yet-25-year-old RHSP either holds or will soon hold that title all to hissownself.

Which begs the question -- while everyone is focused on the varsity winning titles, what kind of "All-JV" team can we build from the annals of MLB history? Let's find out as we meet ...

Free agency is now open to all 30 teams.  It's a good time to be a free agent.

The Jays bullpen looks like it will be a strength for the team next year and at the very least it won't be a weakness.. It has a strong back end of the bullpen with Jeremy Accardo, Scott Downs and Casey Janssen. Although not household names the three of them did an admirable job this year and even if they don’t repeat their performance in 2008, none of them look to be a flash in the pan. After those three will come some combination of Jason Frasor, Brian Tallet, Brian Wolfe, Brandon League, Joe Kennedy, Mike Gosling, Davis Romero, Josh Banks and any other free agent signings. Even with the inherent variance found in the performance of many relievers year-to-year I am reasonably confident the Jays will be able to find seven serviceable arms out of that group. Oh yeah, and BJ Ryan will be back, and presumably as good as new, by the middle of the year.

So why do I want the team to team to spend millions on a 33-year-old reliever who has never pitched in the majors before?

Jon Heyman at CNNSI.com predicts the contracts of the top free agents this offseason.

When you search for "Gene" at the greatness of BaseballReference.com, you receive no less than 121 returns on that search. And though I've never been into genetic modeling or even gene therapy, that seems a likely good pool of talent to build our latest entry in Baseball's Hall of Names.

So step back and put your hands together for ...