The White Sox primary free-agent’s target during the offseason is to sign a 5-year, $90 million contract with the LA Angels of Anaheim. Hunter’s completely unexpected selection serves as a bump on the road GM Ken Williams intends to travel while bringing the Sox back to 2008 playoff contention. Ken Williams set his sights on acquiring the 32-year-old Hunter, in an effort to strengthen his team up the middle. Cabrera, a 2-time Gold Glove winner at shortstop, joined the Sox via a trade from the LA Angels for Garland this Monday.

A-Rod has millions of dollars in his investment accounts, three American League Most Valuable Players awards for his trophy case and zero WS rings for his fingers. Of course, a WS will have to wait. But for the present moment, A-Rod has the satisfaction of his latest Most Valuable Player, won yesterday in a romp over the Detroit Tiger Magglio Ordonez. Alex Rodriguez , said he had had many opportunities, but there was a lot of interest from a lot of other clubs, but he felt he did not want to go anywhere else.
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Glavine received an initial offer from Atlanta on Friday and then spent the evening hours at an Atlanta restaurant. After you have waited 5 seasons for this potential opportunity to come home, there is no reason to just sit around the house and count the days until it becomes a reality. It was reported that Atlanta made a 1-year offer that is worth $6.5 million. x On FridayTom Glavine’s agent, Gregg Clifton, provided a counterproposal that he says never would have been submitted if Tom was not satisfied with the starting point of the negotiations.

Next year the seasonal games of the US professional baseball league “Boston” will be held in Japan. The first game will feature the Boston Red Sox (the World Series champion) and the Oakland A’s. The game will take place on March 25 and 26 at the Tokyo Dome. Both the Boston Red Sox and the Oakland A’s will play seasonal games outside North America for the first time. The organizers of the Baseball League are also planning to hold the games as a part of a season opening ceremony, featuring the Red Sox and the Oakland A’s team against Nippon Professional Baseball teams.

The Cubs traded Craig Monroe to Minnesota a couple of days ago. Monroe’s departure wasn’t a surprise for the majority, though it’s quite amazing Hendry found a taker. He hit .204 with one home run and four RBIs after being traded from Detroit in August for pitching prospect Clay Rapada, and he knew the handwriting was on the wall when he was left off the Cubs’ postseason roster. Since Monroe was going to be non-tendered and made a free agent next month, the Cubs opted to get a low-level prospect from the Twins instead of nothing.
For a player to be named, the Cubs have shed three veteran outfielders who would have cost nearly $15 million if they had returned in 2008.

US Baseball team has defeated South Africa in the World Cup games and, thus, moved to the quaterfinals. Andy LaRoche contributed immensely to the team’s victory – he scored three runs and two hits. US Baseball players have won the game by the score of 4 to 2.

The quarterfinal games start on Friday. The first rival of the American team will be Chinese Taipei. This match will take place on Wednesday. And if the US Baseball players score the victory in this game they will become the top seed to be included in the final eliminating games.

Wednesday afternoon at Citizens Bank Park, the Colorado Rockies faced with the Philadelphia Phillies in the opening game for the National League playoff series. It was amazing, because the rivals were equal – these are two highest scoring teams in the league, and everyone expected the Game – from the capital letter. And in fact it was, because the Rockies beat the Phillies 4-2 in the strained and difficult Game Two. In game one of their postseason match up all the two teams could do combined was provide six runs and ten hits. In Game Two, Jeff Francis, the Rockies pitcher, did most of the game making eight strikeouts in six innings and only doing poorly in two pitches. For your information, the Rockies where making their second appearance in the playoffs since the team was founded fifteen years ago. Since the last playoff victory in 1995, the Rockies got their second one in 2007, and  have won in sixteen games fifteen times total.

The Cleveland Indians have recently contracted Paul Byrd, a 36-year-old pitcher, in spite of the fact that he took human growth hormones prescribed by the doctor to treat a disease during 2002-2005. According to the words of the Cleveland Indians manager, Byrd is a very good baseball player and teammate who fits well in the baseball community. Besides, Byrd went 15-8 last season with a 4.59 earned run average in 31 starts, and 2-0 during the postseason with a 3.60 ERA. If to believe the estimations carried our by MLB.com Byrd will make $8 million next season, which is perfect from the financial point of view. Let’s wait and see if the Indians manager had made the right decision to pick up the contract option on Paul Byrd.