The winter meetings are upon us, with several items of importance coming up for the Mets. The Rule V draft may see some of our promising youngsters depart, we may end up with some bullpen help, and there's always that Reyes guy. MLB.com had an article on what's clearly the most pressing topic of the meetings for the Metsies, our top tier shortstop. Sandy Alderson spoke with the media at the meetings and naturally the topic came up. He also had a conference call with some of the blogosphere, the transcript of which can be found here.

In actual Mets happenings, the team made some changes to their scouting department. None of these names mean a whole lot to me, but it's definitely nice to see Sandy making decisions on who he wants where at this point. With signability issues somewhat eliminated with the new CBA, effective scouting is going to be more important than ever.

There have been some rumblings that Jorge Posada had interest in the Mets but the team had no interest in the "catcher". Jorgie's agent moved quickly to quash that rumor, denying that any such phone call ever took place.

The minnows of Miami signed their first larger fish yesterday, inking former Met Heath Bell to a 3-year $27 million deal. I guess that's better than the Papelbon contractl, but it looks like another division rival isn't too smart with their money (especially since they have far less of it). FanGraphs took another look at that Papelbon deal in the context of the market and it still doesn't look any better.

Last but not least, Ron Santo will be inducted into the Hall of Fame after the Veterans Committee selected him. Congratulations to Santo are in order, he seems like he should have been in the hall long ago.