Here is some quick new from around the league on the last day of November:

• Keith Law reports that the Colorado Rockies and short stop Troy Tulowitzki have agreed to a seven year, $119M contract extension.

That's $17M a season, Jose Reyes.

• Yorvit Torrealba signed a two year, 6.25M deal with the Texas Rangers, Jeff Wilson reports. The Mets apparently had interest in signing Torreabla, according to Ken Davidoff.
• Tom Haurdicourt writes that Milwaukee Brewers GM Doug Melvin isn't sure whether they should keep Prince Fielder or try to trade him. In an on-line poll of 2830 people, 51% say to keep him and 49% say to try him.

Here is the list of players who declind arbiration today:

Type-A:

• Cliff Lee
• Adrian Beltre
• Carl Crawford
• Rafael Soriano
• Jayson Werth

Type-B:

• Orlando Hudson
• Brad Hawpe
• Jesse Crain
• Felipe Lopez
• Kevin Correia
• Octavio Dotel
• Aaron Heilman
• Trevor Hoffman

Ken Davidoff reports that Pedro Feliciano has declined the Mets offer for arbitration. This means if he chooses to sign with another team, they would have to give the Mets a compensatory draft pick. 

Feliciano is looking for a multi-year deal and will test the market to see if he can get it. The Mets still can re-sign Feliciano, but he is now allowed to talk to other teams as well. 

If he accepted arbitration he probably would have received around $4M. I wonder if the Mets have the money to sign Pedro. If I were the Mets I’d offer him two years $9M with a option for a third year. I don’t think he’ll get much more than that out on the market considering he is 35 with a lot of work on that left arm. 

Jim Baumbach reports that the Mets and free agent pitcher Chris Young have been talking to try to work out a deal.

There were earlier reports saying that the Mets had signed Young, but the two sides are just talking.

Baumbach says that Young has spoken to the Mets but a deal is not close yet.

I like this move for the Mets. They don’t have a lot of money to spend, so the goal should be to sign low risk, high reward type guys. Chris Young is that type of free agent.

Young, who turns 32 in May, has been deal with injury problems the past three seasons. Even with his injuries last season, he pitched 20 innings and went 2-0 with a 0.90 ERA and 15 strikeouts.

Young was an All-Star back in 2007 when he went 9-8 with a 3.12 ERA in 172 IP.

The injuries definitely concern me, but if the Mets can get him for a good deal I would do it. When he’s healthy he is a very solid pitcher. The problem is just getting him healthy.

If the Mets sign him they might also want to look at another low risk, high reward pitcher. Maybe Brandon Webb, Brad Penny, and Erik Bedard.

I recently finished Moneyball, and towards the end author Michael Lewis discusses how in 2002, when the Oakland A's acquired Ray Durham, it transformed Durham. Durham, a very aggressive baserunner, used to make single into doubles, doubles into triples, no longer was that aggressive. Durham, who averaged a stolen base every 4.8 games on the White Sox, averaged one stolen base every nine games on the A's. Lewis also noted that current Mets Vice President of player development and scouting, Paul DePodesta ran numbers, on how stealing bases did more harm than good. I began to think to myself, Durham pre-A's sounds a lot like a player we all know and love, Jose Reyes. What effect will the new regime have on Reyes? New Mets General Manager Sandy Alderson's first move was picking up Jose Reyes' option for 2011, at the time Alderson was quoted as saying:  "A long-term deal is not out of the question," Alderson said. "It is something we can certainly discuss at a future date."  But in an interview last week  Alderson said that he would like to first see Reyes play a year before making any decisions. Is that because Alderson & Co. want to see if Reyes can play well in their system?  Do they want to see if Reyes could be more like Hanley Ramirez? More broadly, what will happen to the usually run happy Mets? When Citi Field was first built there were many skeptics wondering about the dimensions of Citi Field, the Wilpons said they built the stadium with pitching, defense speed in mind. At Alderson's press conference he was asked about the dimensions, and said he had no plans in the immediate future to move in the fences. Last week in that interview, Alderson said he wants to see Citi Field for a year, before making any decisions, although ideally he would like it to more a hitters park. Which is it? Does Alderson want to live by the Mets philosophy of pitching, defense and speed, or does he want to do the moneyball approach of on base percentage, and slugging percentage? 

So I decided to do some research on Alderson's A's, DePodesta's Dodgers, and J.P. Ricciardi's(special assistant to the GM) Blue Jays, to see how run happy, or non-run happy they actually were, to help shed some light on the subject. (All stats courtesy of Baseball Reference)

Alderson first:

Keep in mind many of these years were with Rickey Henderson. In 1983, Henderson had 103 stolen bases alone. If we take out 1983, the averages change to 22, 115, 50, and 165 respectively. 

DePodesta:

While a small sample, we still see what DePodesta's philosophy is, which possibly led to his firing at the end of 2005.

Ricciardi: 

If one were to average out Alderson, DePodesta, and Ricciardi's averages, you would get 26 triples, 92 stolen bases, 40 caught stealing's, and 132 total stolen bases attempts.

Now let's compare those numbers with numbers from the Mets last six seasons(from the beginning of the Minaya regime):

As one can clearly see, the philosophy that the new front office's philosophy differs greatly with what we've been used to. I think that's exactly why Alderson is waiting a year before making any drastic moves, he wants to see how this team can play his baseball, in this ballpark(the way it is). While Alderson has not said it straight out, we see clearly from his words and his actions (or lack thereof) that he sees 2011 as a transition year. He wants to see how the New York Mets play Sandy Alderson's style of baseball. Whatever the case is, there is one thing that we know for sure, there will be no more sacrifice bunts in the first inning.

This morning, Ken Davidoff of Newsday tweeted that Pedro Feliciano's agent Melvin Roman says his client is "seriously considering" accepting the Mets' arbitration offer. 

Feliciano, who turns 35 soon, earned $2.9M in 2010 and could make around $3.5M in 2011 if he accepts the Mets' arbitration offer and then goes through the arbitration process. 

MLBTR also believes the Yankees have high interest in the left-handed specialist, and suspect that other teams have strong interest in Feliciano as a lefty-specialist due to his durability over the last three seasons and as a great Plan B given the high asking prices of Scott Downs and Brian Fuentes. 

There is some skepticism of Feliciano's age and league-leading relief appearances over the last 2 seasons, as a cause for concern for how much longer his arm can hold up given the mileage on it. 

MLBTR also recently did a "Free Agent Stock Watch" for Feliciano and broke down the pro's and con's of pursuing the Lefty this winter.