News and notes from around the NL East

Are there any other players out there named Manny that the Nationals can sign this week?

They inked Manny Delcarmen and Emmanuel "Manny" Burriss to minor league deals yesterday, bringing back two players who spent 2014 at Triple-A Syracuse and giving both invitations to big league spring training.

Manny Ramirez is still out there. Anyone interested?

Starting tonight at 6 p.m. on MLB Network, the results of the Baseball Writers' Association of America voting on the Manager of the Year awards will be announced.

Nationals skipper Matt Williams, in his first year as a big league manager, is up against Giants manager Bruce Bochy and the Pirates' Clint Hurdle.

I say Williams is the favorite to take home the hardware, but we'll find out for sure tonight.

Yesterday was a busy one in the National League East, as the Mets signed outfielder Michael Cuddyer to a two-year, $21 million deal, the Braves signed former Nats right-hander Chien-Ming Wang to a minor league contract, and there are pretty big rumors circulating about Atlanta, Miami and Philadelphia.

Cuddyer's signing was a bit of a surprise, even to those who cover the Mets. The veteran outfielder, who will turn 36 in March, could have accepted the Rockies' qualifying offer, paying him $15.3 million for 2015, but instead opted to join his good buddy David Wright in New York.

Why would the Mets give $21 million to a 36-year-old who landed on the DL three times in 2014? Well, they obviously see themselves as contenders this upcoming season, and wanted to add an offensive boost by bringing in a right-handed hitter who won a batting title in 2013 and has hit .331/.385/.543 the last two seasons.

Yes, a good bit of that production came at Coors Field, where the ball absolutely flies, but remember, they're bringing in the fences again at Citi Field, and that park will become more hitter-friendly. Cuddyer gives them more punch in the middle of the order and that rotation is starting to look more dangerous by the year.

Meanwhile, there are all kinds of reports floating around that the Braves are thinking hard about trading catcher/outfielder Evan Gattis and possibly even Justin Upton and/or Jason Heyward.

The Braves are in an interesting spot, and it seems they're giving thought to potentially taking a step back in 2015 in the interest of tooling up again for a couple of years down the road. Both Upton and Heyward are set to become free agents after the 2015 season, so like the Nationals are doing with Ian Desmond, Jordan Zimmermann and Doug Fister, Atlanta is apparently willing to listen to offers on their stars who are in the final years of their contracts.

Moving on to the Marlins, FoxSports.com's Ken Rosenthal reported that Miami is talking about contract extensions not only with Giancarlo Stanton, but also Jose Fernandez, Christian Yelich and Adeiny Hechavarria.

Stanton will be tough to lock up because of how large a contract he'll demand and Fernandez is represented by Scott Boras, so reaching an extension with the right-hander coming off Tommy John will be pretty difficult. But the Marlins are making a push to re-up some of their talented youngsters.

And finally, there are reports that the Phillies are still looking at potentially dealing Ryan Howard and Cole Hamels, two guys who are still owed boatloads of money.

How much of all this is just offseason talk, with teams kicking around names in preliminary discussions? Well, yes, that could be a lot of it.

But this has the potential to be a very interesting offseason in the NL East.