Filed Under » MLB

With the trade of veterans Jose Reyes, Josh Johnson, Mark Buehrle, Emilio Bonifacio and John Buck to the Blue Jays behind it, the Marlins' front office is reportedly looking forward to making other moves to further overhaul the team.

"They have been very active throughout the league making it know they are looking to do sign-and-trades," said one AL Central general manager. "I haven't talked to a free agent yet who hasn't been contacted by the Marlins. They have money to spend, it's just that they will then trade the player for prospects and cast-offs a week or two later."

According to Mike Moye, Josh Hamilton's agent, the Marlins have offered his client "a very generous 7-year deal," which is for more years than the Rangers will go. "The one hang-up is that Josh has to waive his no-trade clause so the Marlins can dump him. Josh doesn't want to be stuck playing in Kansas City or San Diego or some baseball hell like that."

Miami owner Jeffrey Loria denies that his team is looking to acquire top free agents, only to immediately flip them.

"There is no way we would sign someone and then immediately trade him," said Loria. "We would keep these players at least through Opening Day so we can sell season tickets off of their names. Then, when our fans are duped, trade them."

Philadelphia Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins told reporters that he is retiring today, having spent most of last night reading Nate Silver's political blog FiveThirtyEight.

"My wife was telling me about this stats guy who nailed the whole election," said Rollins. "So I check out his site, and this dude got, like, every single electoral vote right."

Rollins proceeded to read as many of Silver's posts as he could, until hitting what he described as a "bullshit New York Times paywall". So the 2007 NL MVP went ahead and Googled "Nate Silver stats genius", wondering how the pollster expertly predicted Obama's razor-thin win in Florida, but instead discovered Silver's PECOTA projection system for baseball players' career trajectories.

"Apparently [Silver's] numbers say I'm gonna turn into Alan Trammell, but with less range. Which seems crazy, but that guy got 31 out of 33 Senate races right, so…yeah, I'm gonna call that ESPN guy back about the color commentator job."