Davidoff: Tasty leftovers from the meetings

Busy few days at the general managers' and owners' meetings. Plenty of material left over. Therefore, consider this an early set of leftovers for Thanksgiving week.

Tampa Bay has an amazing eight free agents who are ranked either Type A (four) or Type B (four), meaning the Rays could take in an absolute haul of compensatory draft picks for 2011. Which bodes very well for their long-term future.

For the shorter term, however, the defending American League East champions need to rebuild their bullpen, which is in a position to suffer massive losses.

"Over the last three or four years, we've made five really good bullpen moves," Tampa Bay executive vice president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said, "but that's over four years. Basically, we're trying to replicate that in one offseason. It's going to be difficult."

Rafael Soriano is the best available closer not counting Mariano Rivera, who will re-sign with the Yankees. Righthanders Grant Balfour, Dan Wheeler and Chad Qualls and lefty Randy Choate also have proven to be useful pieces.

Balfour and Choate could return by accepting arbitration, if Tampa Bay offers it Tuesday, and rookie lefty Jake McGee figures to be an important piece. But most of all, the Rays must stay alert, as they proved last year, when they traded for Soriano after the righthander stunned the Braves by accepting arbitration.

"It's hard for us to say on November 16th how things are going to shake out," Friedman said. "We just have to be extremely prepared and aggressive when opportunities present themselves."

Speaking of Tampa Bay, don't look for B.J. Upton to be traded. It would be quite a blow for the Rays to lose Upton in addition to departing free agent Carl Crawford.

I predicted that the White Sox would sign Soriano, but at the moment, the White Sox are focusing their dollars on acquiring a lefty bat or two. John-ny Damon and/or Hideki Matsui? Eh. Only if the White Sox whiff on their top choice, Adam Dunn. The White Sox have interest in retaining popular first baseman Paul Konerko, but they wonder if he'll go to play for his hometown Diamondbacks for a discount, even as Arizona GM Kevin Towers says he isn't currently interested.

Damon is eyeing Atlanta, Baltimore and Tampa Bay, all of which train close to his Florida home and spend their regular seasons in relative proximity. Matsui would like to join either the White Sox or A's, as both need a lefty bat and both play their home games on grass.

The Yankees never formally requested to interview White Sox pitching coach Don Cooper for their opening at the same spot, but there was communication between the two clubs concerning the Yankees' interest. The White Sox shut it down quickly because they declined to liberate Cooper from his 2011 commitment for a lateral move.

So the Yankees went to the North Side of Chicago, where the Cubs let pitching coach Larry Rothschild go from his deal to sign a three-year pact to coach A.J. Burnett, CC Sabathia and the rest of the Yankees' pitchers.

Cooper, a New York City native whose mother lives in Queens, would've been interested in the switch. Now his impending free agency a year from now will be poorly timed.

If the Yankees sign Cliff Lee, the Rangers will surely explore a trade for Kansas City's Zack Greinke. But Texas will be reluctant to give up too much for the righthander, given 1) his brilliant 2009 stands out as an outlier among otherwise solid-but-not-outstanding seasons, and 2) his previous bout with depression.

One talent evaluator from another National League club, on new Braves second baseman Dan Uggla: "I know he hits home runs, but that defense is hard to watch."

Odd that Reds GM Walt Jocketty won the 2010 Executive of the Year award from The Sporting News, as voted on by Jocketty's peers. First of all, Friedman or Texas' Jon Daniels arguably were better choices. Second of all, the Cincinnati team that won the NL Central was put together as much - if not more so - by Jocketty's predecessor, Wayne Krivsky, who's now with the Mets.