With the Winter Meetings less than 48 hours away, the San Diego Padres will be looking to add a right handed bat as well as pitching depth.
Whether that comes by free agency or by trade is yet to be seen, but here are a few names that are being talked about.
First off, gotta give credit to the Padres for doing something they needed to do in adding legendary announcer and San Diego resident Dick Enberg to their television broadcast booth.
Enberg will join long-time Padres' color commentator Mark Grant to cover at least 130 Padre games this season, with the other 20-30 games being done by second-year man Mark Neely.
Now that that's out of the way, let's get to a few of the names being bantered about.
With Henry Blanco close to a deal with the Mets, the Padres will turn elsewhere to try and find a veteran catcher for the 2010 season. That man could be former Astros' catcher Brad Ausmus.
Ken Rosenthal of FoxSports.com mentioned also that the Giants and Dodgers, who Ausmus played for last season, are also interested in the 40-year-old catcher.
As mentioned before, the Padres will be looking for pitching depth to add to either their rotation or bullpen. An interesting name that the Padres' could look at is 29-year-old left-hander Noah Lowry.
The former Giants' pitcher is coming off of forearm surgery in March 2008, as well as surgery in May to remove a rib to help with his thoracic outlet syndrome. Despite the surgeries, Lowry's agent is telling teams that his client is completely healthy.
Not only are the Padres interested, but according to ESPN's Jerry Crasnick , the Pirates, Rockies, Dodgers, A's, Mariners, and Reds are also interested. It could be an interesting race to see who lands him.
MLB.com's Corey Block has an article out talking about the team's needs that they could possibly fill during the winter meetings.
In that article, Brock mentions the possibility that the team could trade third baseman Kevin Kouzmanoff and slide Chase Headley into his natural position.
Doing that would allow the team to give more playing time to 6'6", 285 pound Kyle Blanks. Having him in the lineup at the same time with All-Star first baseman Adrian Gonzalez definitely gives this team more power.
As expected, the Padres did not offer outfielder Brian Giles arbitration— meaning his days as a Padre have officially come to a close. There's been no talk as to where the long- time Padre and Pirate will end up, but I doubt Giles' playing days are done.
There will be many more rumors flying as the Winter Meetings approach, this coming Monday Dec. 7.
We'll see if the Padres will be buyers or choose to not show their hand just yet, and wait until Spring training gets closer before they really start to make their moves.
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