Twins Winter Meeting Notes: Cuddyer, Buerhle, Pujols

Update, 3:50 pm
Mark Buerhle to the Marlins. 4 years, $58 million, says Ken Rosenthal.

Update, 1:08 pm - It sounds like southpaw Erik Bedard is close to signing a one-year contract with the Pirates for $4.5 million dollars. If the Twins plan on signing decent pitching at affordable prices, the boats have started sailing here too.

Update, 12:30 pm

Not much on the Twins front, but some interesting things throughout the rest of baseball.

Item #1
-Bryan Hoch, who covers the Yankees for MLB.com tweeted one of the best things you Twins fans will probably read today. "Heard Nakajima's bat could be better than Twins' Nishioka, but not as good a fielder". So, that's kind of fun. Also, this obviously means the Yankees won the rights to Nakajima.

Item #2
-Dan Knobler of CBSSports.com believes that if the Marlins don't get Albert Pujols, they'll make a hard run at Prince Fielder. Their rotation is apparently set as is, so they don't need to worry about spending more money there. The Rangers have apparently also expressed interest in Fielder, but would have to work on a deal that wasn't so long, according to Jon Heyman.

That's all I've got for now. Let's hope something fun happens before the 6 o'clock roundup!

Update, 10:40 am - The Rockies and Padres will complete a trade which will send Huston Street and his $7.5 million salary to San Diego for a player to be named later. This PTBNL is likely to be a non-prospect since the Padres are picking up Street's tab. With Street's obvious availability, and with Ryan's insistance that the organization was looking externally for a proven closer, I do find it somewhat odd that Minnesota wasn't mentioned at all. Target Field would play well for Street, whereas Coors Field was a hell hole for him (and nearly every other pitcher, cough, Kevin Slowey, cough).

Update, 10:20 am - Per LEN III, the Twins will be in attendance for Joel Zumaya's workout next week. Zumaya throws hard and can strike batters out, but needs a year or two to rebuild value and prove he can throw 60 innings without his arm falling off.

8 am updates...

The Twins haven't been talked about much this morning (yet!) at the Winter Meetings in Dallas, and most of the attention is still on the whole Pujols-to-Miami-maybe situation, but there are a couple Twins notes from last night's roundup that we can discuss today (and more Pujols. Everyone wants more Pujols).

Notes after the jump.

Item #1
-Jon Heyman tweeted yesterday that Mark Buerhle has narrowed his field down to 5 teams, including the Twins, Marlins, Nationals, Rangers, and Mets. He's apparently looking for a 4-year deal, which may seem like a lot, but he's pitched more than 200 innings every year since 2001.

Item #2
-Heyman again tweeted that the Twins offered Michael Cuddyer a 3-year, $25 million offer, but that he hadn't taken it yet. The Twins were supposed to meet with Cuddyer's agent last night and are asking for a resolution to their offer. Today should be when we find out if Cuddyer stays a Twin or not.

Item #3
-According to David O'Brien and the St. Louis Dispatch's Cards reporter, the Cardinals have offered Albert Pujols near $220 million for a 10-year deal. The newly cash-happy Miami Marlins are still offering their 10-year, $200 million contract as well. Ed Note: That is absolutely insane, and I don't care how good Pujols is, you don't give a 31 year old a 10 year contract, whaaaat?!

I'll keep you guys updated if anything big happens before noon or so, but in the meantime, feel free to discuss what little Twins news there is coming out of the Winter Meetings.