Hello, Larry

The only major Phillies-related news to come out of the winter meetings, which end today, was manager Larry Bowa's contract extension. The Inquirer's Todd Zolecki played the announcement as a warning shot to the clubhouse, which, you may recall, exhibited some mutinous tendencies during last season's disastrous late-season road trip. Locked up through 2005, with team options for 2006 and 2007, Bowa "has security," Zolecki wrote. "And the players in the clubhouse, some of whom haven't seen eye to eye with Bowa in the past, know it."

Lacking anything meaty to report, the city dailies fell back on color-by-numbers stories. The Daily News wrote about baseball executives and managers falling over themselves heaping praise on the team's moves this off-season, while the Inky interviewed Bowa on the need to translate those moves into success on the field.

Writing today, Zolecki speculates that Kevin Millwood is almost certain to accept the Phillies' arbitration offer, since all evidence indicates that, contrary to Scott Boras's hot air, no one is interested in signing his client to the long-term, megabucks contract he's been pitching. Even the Phillies stopped negotiating a multiyear dear once they traded for Eric Milton. "We're very interested in having him pitch for us, but what we're talking about is a one-year contract and the ability to reengage at some point beyond that if it makes sense," Wade told Zolecki.