SAN DIEGO - Major League Baseball's Winter Meetings are this week at the Manchester Grand Hyatt, a 15-minute walk from Petco Park, home of the Padres. It's an event where reporters and pundits take a kernel of corn and in seconds turn it into a jumbo bag of popcorn. Trade rumors are what make these meetings beautiful. But some years, such as last December in Las Vegas, there was more speculation than action. The podium in the press room stood most empty. Little happened. This December, if the...

SAN DIEGO - There's a certain rhythm to the annual Winter Meetings that is spliced with interruptions. The breaking news and hastily arranged press conferences, though the Orioles usually don't get to the podium and aren't likely to be the center of attention this week. Executive vice president/general manager Mike Elias will meet daily with the media in the late afternoon, local time, which means filing late stories before wandering the lobby again. The usual managers luncheon has been...

The Washington Nationals agreed to terms on a Major League contract with right-handed pitcher Kyle Finnegan on Sunday. Nationals President of Baseball Operations and General Manager Mike Rizzo made the announcement. Finnegan, 28, joins the Nationals after seven seasons in the Oakland Athletics' Minor League system. In 2019, he went 3-2 with 14 saves and a 2.31 ERA (13 ER/50.2 IP) in 42 relief appearances between Triple-A Las Vegas and Double-A Midland. Finnegan's 14 saves led Oakland's Minor...

SAN DIEGO - In their quest to refortify a bullpen that was in a constant state of change all season, the Nationals have signed Kyle Finnegan to a big league deal, taking a chance on a 28-year-old right-hander with a big arm and eye-popping minor league numbers this season but zero big league experience. Finnegan has spent the last seven years in the Athletics' farm system, a former struggling starter who made the conversion to reliever in 2016 and enjoyed a career renaissance in the process. A...

The entire baseball world today makes it way to San Diego, where on Monday the 2019 Winter Meetings open for business. As always, the focus will be on free agents, many of them key members of the Nationals' championship roster. But the odds of Stephen Strasburg or Anthony Rendon signing this week probably aren't great. Agent Scott Boras is still in the preliminary stages of a courtship process with several franchises that could drag on well into the winter. So perhaps the more likely...

One thing that would certainly aid and maybe hasten the Orioles' rebuilding efforts would be seeing some of their young pitching prospects move on to have big league success. Along those lines, the Orioles added five young pitchers to their organization in the last week. Last Monday they acquired lefty pitcher Easton Lucas from Miami in a trade for infielder Jonathan Villar. Two days later the Orioles picked up four young right-handers from the Los Angeles Angels in a trade for starting...

Mike Elias engaged in his first Winter Meetings as the person in charge already looking ahead to the following year's trip and the opportunity to concentrate on the roster. The chance to handle the more common tasks in a setting that at its most complimentary can be classified as manic and disorienting. The Orioles didn't hire Elias as executive vice president/general manager until the third week of November 2018 and he was preoccupied in Las Vegas with finding a manager and trying to stamp...

So much attention has been paid - and will continue to be paid - to the Nationals' two biggest free agents this winter: Anthony Rendon and Stephen Strasburg. But let's not forget the host of other key veterans from their World Series roster who currently aren't under contract, because their fates are plenty important to the franchise's chances in 2020 as well. Friday's deal to bring back Howie Kendrick for one guaranteed year at $6.25 million plus a mutual option for 2021 is a really...

The latest edition of the Rule 5 draft is set for Thursday at the Winter Meetings in San Diego. The last Rule 5 draft where the Orioles did not make a selection was in 2005. Yep, it's been that long, and the Orioles are certainly expected to make a selection again this year when they pick second behind Detroit. The order of the draft is the same as for the First-Year Player Draft set for June. Picking first last December in the Rule 5, the Orioles took infielder Richie Martin from Oakland. He...

We don't have a long list of "Nationals Classics" airing on MASN this week, but two of the three games went extra innings and ended in Washington walk-offs, while the third featured a strikeout-hunting hurler who reached a major milestone. Who doesn't like a walk-off, especially when it's the Nationals doing the celebrating? Our two games featuring bonus baseball sent fans home happy from RFK Stadium in the team's formative years. Sandwiched between the two games offering late heroics is...