Over at FOX Sports, Ken Rosenthal has his latest column up. It's loaded with good stuff, and you can click here if you want to go check out the entire thing. But we've put it through a strainer to give you guys the good stuff, which is obviously the series of words that follow below.
- "Man, I would like to be Tom Ricketts right now." That's how Rosenthal starts off his article, while noting that the Chicago Cubs can "hire just about an general manager" that they want. Rosenthal lists off some of the big names that we've heard before- Boston's Theo Epstein, Oakland's Billy Beane, New York's Brian Cashman and Tampa Bay's Andrew Friedman- but he also argues that Ricketts should strong consider some of the top assistant GM's out there, such as White Sox AGM Rick Hahn.
- A's outfielder David DeJesus has cleared waivers, but teammates Coco Crisp and Rich Harden were claimed and pulled back. That makes it unlikely that we'll see any deals soon from Oakland unless some contender views DeJesus as a possible upgrade despite his recent struggles.
- Rosenthal discussed how Jered Weaver's contract extension breaks away from the usual pattern of Scott Boras clients, who generally hit the free agent market rather than sign contract extensions. Rosenthal thinks that the Angels ace easily could have landed a salary of $20 million or more as a free agent with another strong season in 2012.