When told on Wednesday that one baseball executive described MLB trade talks moving at a “glacial” pace, Cardinals president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom furled his face and openly balked. “That’s not how it has felt to me,

MLB Rule 5 Draft results: Tracking a complete list of selections from Winter Meetings originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

Entering the winter meetings, the Orioles’ 2026 payroll is a projected $113 million to rank 18th in MLB, according to Cot’s. The combined yearly salary for a front-of-the-rotation starter and a middle-of-the-order bat would be approximately $50 million — almost exactly the difference between the current payroll and the 2025 total.

The early smoke has indicated Elias has been in on all the key free agent targets – Cease, Valdez, Zac Gallen and Ranger Suarez. In a winter in which the Orioles simply cannot come up empty in their pitcher search, jumping quickly into the market could be particularly important here.

Newly hired San Diego Padres manager Craig Stammen made his debut at the 2025 MLB Winter Meetings on Monday. He had his general media availability as well as doing interviews on MLB Network, the MLB Sirius XM station as well as talking with Sammy Levitt of 97.3 The Fan (the Padres flagship station).

This story was excerpted from Keegan Matheson’s Blue Jays Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.