Note: The MLB Winter Meetings start Monday
This afternoon, like with the other 29 teams, Omar Minaya and his staff will arrive in Las Vegas for the MLB Winter Meetings, which begin tomorrow at the Bellagio and end on Thursday.
The team has booked nearly 50 rooms at the Bellagio and the Convention Center for roughly 50 staff members, ranging from team executives to media directors to minor league personnel.
Typically, Minaya and his immediate staff will organize from their suite at the Bellagio starting at 8 am, where they will meet with other team representatives, agents, scouts and reporters, while dispatching to other team’s suites to do the same later in the day.
Naturally, I have never been to the Meetings, nor have I been in a team suite, but I have talked with enough people to get a sense of what it’s like. I envision lots of snack food, dry-erase boards, binders, tons of notebooks, laptops and various sources of caffeine.
Meanwhile, reporters are occasionally invited up to the suite for a briefing. Otherwise, they are downstairs in the lobby, waiting for something to write about. Occasionally, an agent or team official will slide by them, stop, chat and give a quote or two, while other writers scurry for the latest insight and rumor in to what teams are doing upstairs.
Later in the night – after people take a shower and grab dinner – scouts, reporters, team employees, agents, and even fans, all mingle at the bar, which is where most rumors are born.
I will not be attending the event. I thought about going, and SNY considered sending me, but, in the end, to do what I do best, it makes far more sense 
for me to be here, in my home office, in lock down, watching and listening, texting and calling, and keeping you updated on the entire event, while linking to other reports and keeping the conversation moving.
Like last year, and the previous four years, I’ll be writing and posting and linking and blogging more or less non-stop through the 90–hour period that will be this year’s Meetings, while keeping in touch with my own sources to give you a sense of what’s happening and what it’s like to be at the Meetings, all in hopes of seeing a few transactions occur that will help make this team better.
I look forward to it, and I hope you do to.
