Happy Thanksgiving!
On Sunday, I will follow up on Jeff's reaction yesterday to the new CBA with one of my own, as I'm not entirely convinced that this is the death knell to competitive balance that he and some others make it out to be. To give a brief preview, I think there are aspects to the new CBA that savvy small market teams can take advantage of in ways that large market teams will be on level footing, and of course the draft lottery does provide one key small market resource that will be unavailable to large market teams at all. In the prior CBA, there was nothing whatsoever that gave small market teams any inherent advantage over teams that could spend more. Draft compensation, international free agency, going over slot on later round draft picks, all this will inevitably wind up favoring high revenue teams, and while the new CBA doesn't completely address this (nor should it, in my opinion,) it is a step in the right direction compared to the last CBA.
Holidays are typically slow sections of the hot stove league, as such there's just a DWL and non-sign update today.
The Rockies had mild interest in Bruce Chen before he re-signed with Kansas City. Chen was among the interesting below the radar names that got brought up among the free agent arms. Among those, Paul Maholm and Rich Harden still stand out, and both are still available. I still have doubts about even this level of FA pitcher accepting a deal to pitch in Denver, but I think they're at least a bit more realistic than Roy Oswalt.
Wilin Rosario has certainly cooled off after a hot start to his Dominican Winter League season, Rosario had a golden sombrero the game before drawing two walks and scoring a run in yesterday's victory. He has a streak of eight straight contests with at least one strikeout, racking up a total of 15 in that span. On offense, that lack of contact will limit his ceiling, but it's possible for him to gain some back by consistently showing the kind of walk drawing ability he did yesterday.