Shady Marlins Applesauce: Marlins To Be Investigated By SEC, Pedro To Officially Retire, Blue Jays Acquire Terrible Catcher From Angels

With the winter meetings beginning tomorrow in Dallas, we'll likely start to hear the beginnings of some rumors later tonight and into Monday as the GM's and front office execs begin to filter in for the festivities. But for now, here's what happened on Saturday:

Meet the Mets & Around the Majors

Jose Reyes Watch: It should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway--this is going to be a huge week in Jose Reyes Watch and it wouldn't be too surprising to see Jose reach a decision sometime in the next seven days. To further update the status of the Marlins, beat writer Joe Capozzi says that they have not given Reyes a deadline, despite what has been reported by others the last couple of days. One interesting component to the negotiations could be the fact that the Marlins have a policy against handing out no-trade clauses to free agent signings. President Larry Beinfest thinks that this shouldn't hurt the team's chances but, well, it's his job to say that (and then deal a player like Reyes away in a firesale in a year or two). There's another interesting component, but we'll get to that further down. Aside from Jose, the Mets will be working on bolstering their bullpen, bench and TRAIDING DAVID WRONGZ?! Okay, probably not.

Former Mets Nolan Ryan, Bud Harrelson and Ed Kranepool are lobbying for Gil Hodges to get into the Hall of Fame.

Is Nick Evans an undervalued asset? Is Nick Evans the new market inefficiency? Who is Nick Evans and why am I writing about him?

In quasi-Mets news, Pedro Martinez is going to officially announce his retirement soon. Pedro hasn't pitched since 2009 when he threw 45 innings for that team down the turnpike. The man had quite a career but I just wish he could've won a ring in New York (and, you know, have thrown more than one good season in a Mets uniform).

So here's that component to the Jose Reyes chase that I teased up above: the Marlins are suddenly being investigated by the SEC for their shady stadium deal that will leave Miami-Dade county with a bill of $2.4 billion dollars to be paid over the next 40 years. The Marlins have stated that they will fully cooperate with the investigation and further, they believe that this will have no effect on the team on the field or their new free spending ways. Funny because Jeff Wilpon said the same thing after all the Madoff stuff broke and that's worked out just fine, right? Oh yeah.

Here's a primer on the Rule 5 draft from MLB's website. The draft, which takes place on Thursday, is the final act of the Winter Meetings. If you're interested, here's a comprehensive list of the best guys who are available from every team.

Finally, the Blue Jays acquired awful hitting catcher Jeff Mathis from the Angels for lefty pitcher Brad Mills. Mathis, who's quite literally the worst hitting regular player in the majors over the last ten years, will either serve as Toronto's backup catcher or be non-tendered. Somewhere in Texas, Mike Napoli is laughing.