According to multiple reports, running back Tiki Barber has filed papers with the NFL to come out of retirement. The news was confirmed by Barber’s agency (via twitter).

Barber, 35 (he turns 36 in April), retired from the NFL after the 2006 season. He has rushed for 10,449 yards in his career, eclipsing 1,000 running yards in six of his last seven seasons, including a 2006 campaign in which he earned a spot in the Pro Bowl while rushing for 1,662 yards and more than five yards per carry. Barber also has 5,183 receiving yards in his career, and was the third running back ever (along with Marshall Faulk and Marcus Allen) to join the 10,000 rushing yard, 5,000 receiving yard club.

Barber played all 10 of his NFL seasons with the Giants. After retiring from football, he was hired by NBC to appear on both the Today Show and Football Night in America. However, Barber was dropped by the network in 2010.

According to ESPN.com, free agent safety Bob Sanders — who has spent the entirety of his seven-year NFL career with the Colts — has agreed to sign a one-year deal with the Chargers. Sanders has been an impact member of the Indianapolis secondary when on the field, but he has played in just nine regular season games in the last three years, following a 2007 campaign in which he was named the NFL Defensive Player of the Year. That season resulted in a five-year, $37.5 million deal for Sanders from the Colts, but his injuries led Indianapolis to cut him last month.

According to FoxSports.com, which cited major league sources, participants in the negotiations between Albert Pujols and the St. Louis Cardinals on a long-term deal are “increasingly pessimistic” about the early shape of negotiations. Pujols signed a seven-year, $100 million deal with St. Louis prior to the 2004 season that included a $16 million option for 2011. The slugger has informed the Cardinals that he will not negotiate once spring training gets underway, meaning that there are roughly two weeks to go for the two sides to reach an extension.

According to the story, Pujols — a three-time National League MVP who was runner-up for the award in 2010 — seeks a deal that “likely would vault him ahead of Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, who signed a 10-year, $275 million, free-agent deal at the same age.”

Though the Red Sox (Adrian Gonzalez) and Yankees (Mark Teixeira) both have players who are expected to occupy first base for them for years to come (Gonzalez is expected to sign an extension that would run through 2018, while Teixeira is under contract through 2016), the article suggests that the Cubs, Rangers and Angels could all bid heavily on Pujols, with the Mets and Dodgers looming as potential bidders for his services, depending on the resolution of the financial issues facing their current owners. Moreover, the article suggests, the Sox and Yankees “could get creative” and become involved in bidding on Pujols.

According to ESPN.com, Albert Pujols — who will play for $16 million this year under the option campaign of a seven-year, $100 million deal he signed prior to the 2004 season — would exercise his right to veto any trade proposed by the St. Louis Cardinals. Pujols has the right to block a deal as a player with at least 10 years of major league service time and five consecutive seasons with his current club.

As such, given that Pujols has made it known that he does not want to negotiate a contract extension once spring training begins, the Cardinals face the prospect of negotiating an extension with him prior to the start of spring training or having Pujols test the free-agent waters following the 2011 season.

Pujols is reportedly using the 10-year, $275 million deal between Alex Rodriguez and the Yankees as his point of reference in negotiations. He is coming off a season in which he led the National League in homers (42), RBI (118) and runs (115) while hitting .312/.414/.596/1.011. In his 10-year career, he has assembled one of the most impressive lines in big league history, hitting .331/.426/.624/1.050 with 408 homers and 1,230 RBI.

Yankees co-chairman Hank Steinbrenner, in an interview with the New York Post, offered echoes of the bombast that characterized many of his father’s win-at-all-costs proclamations.

“We will do what we have to do to win,” Steinbrenner said in the interview. “We have the highest payroll and the reason is we are committed to our fans to win.

“We just have to [expletive] win.”

Steinbrenner said that he believed the Yankees had one of the four best teams in baseball, but it remained to be seen whether his club would emerge as the best in the game. He also suggested that he was very pleased with the acquisition of reliever Rafael Soriano, but regretted that free-agent starter Cliff Lee declined to meet with New York GM Brian Cashman before signing with the Phillies.

He also suggested that the Yankees would not apologize to anyone who criticizes them for their aggressive spending so long as baseball redistributes some of the team’s income via revenue sharing and the luxury tax.

“We will do what it takes to win. Look at the money we are paying out in revenue sharing. We are baseball’s stimulus package,” Steinbrenner said. “The fans of other teams have no reason to complain about us or the Red Sox or the teams that support the rest of baseball.”

Derek Jeter is the Yankees’ shortstop. But New York GM Brian Cashman has already started to give thought to a potential position change for the future Hall of Famer.

Cashman, in an appearance on WFAN in New York this morning, said that he could envision Jeter following the path of Hall of Famer Robin Yount, who spent the first 11 years of his career as a shortstop before moving to center field for the final nine years of his career. Yount won MVPs at both shortstop (in 1982) and center field (in 1989).

“I like corner outfielders and corner infielders who have power, so for me, if [Jeter's] ever gonna move, it’s probably gonna be a Robin Yount situation. But we don’t have to deal with it at this point,” Cashman said, in remarks detailed by ESPN.com. “We’ll deal with it when we have to.”

The idea of having Jeter follow Yount’s career path would have its challenges. Yount was entering his age 29 season when he moved to the outfield. Jeter is entering his age 37 season. Only 19 players have played 100 or more games in center field in a season after turning 37. (For the list, click here.)

Cashman said that it would be surprising if Jeter remained at shortstop for the life of his three-year, $51 million deal that includes a player option for a fourth year, but that he wouldn’t rule out such a possibility completely, and that Jeter is working diligently this offseason in hopes of staying at short. Moreover, Cashman made clear that the Yankees are not currently working to prepare for such a move, and that Jeter is viewed as the shortstop for the coming year.

According to FoxSports.com, the Angels have agreed to deal catcher Mike Napoli. While the return is as yet unknown, the deal remains unofficial until the players involved take physicals.

UPDATE: Ken Rosenthal of FoxSports.com reports that the Blue Jays will be sending outfielder Vernon Wells to the Angels in the deal, which will feature additional players beyond Napoli and Wells.

Wells is viewed as having one of the most onerous contracts in the majors. He is playing under a seven-year, $126 million deal that has four years and $86 million remaining. In 2010, he hit .273/.331/.515/.847 with 31 homers and 88 RBI, his most homers since 2006. The performance earned him his third career All-Star berth, and his first since 2006. He also has three Gold Gloves, and seems likely to be used as the center fielder for the Angels.

Even so, the 32-year-old’s production was considered disappointing to the Blue Jays after he agreed to the extension in the 2006-07 offseason, one year before he was eligible for free agency. The fifth overall pick of the 1997 draft has a career .280/.329/.475/.804 line, and never emerged into the superstar that the Jays anticipated when they signed him.

Napoli, 29, hit .238/.316/.468/.784 with 26 homers in 140 games split between catcher and first base for the Angels last year. The 2010 season was the third straight in which he’d hit 20 or more homers. The Sox placed a waiver claim on Napoli when the Angels put him on August waivers last season, but the Halos pulled him back when the two sides did not strike a deal. Napoli’s career highlight with the Angels, meanwhile, likely came against the Sox, when he crushed two homers against Josh Beckett in Game 3 of the 2009 American League Division Series.

According to ESPN.com, former Broncos head coach and Patriots assistant coach Josh McDaniels‘ talks with the Rams have hit a “significant snag.” The report suggested that McDaniels had been viewed as the front-runner to take over as offensive coordinator in St. Louis, and that the impasse in contract talks between the coach and team represented “a surprising development,” with one source suggested that negotiations “may have been derailed by the team’s conservative fiscal approach.”

The same report suggests that Seattle is now talking with McDaniels about the possibility of becoming offensive coordinator under Seahawks coach Pete Carroll.

“With the firing of Jeremy Bates as Seahawks offensive coordinator, Seattle is giving strong consideration to hiring McDaniels for the vacancy, according to a source with knowledge of the situation,” the report stated.

According to The Associated Press, Royals starting pitcher Gil Meche elected to retire rather than attempting to move from the rotation to the bullpen in the final season of a five-year, $55 million deal he signed to join the Royals after the 2006 season. The right-hander had been due $11 million in the last year of the deal, but after pitching just 190 innings in 32 starts and 11 relief appearances over the last two years, the 32-year-old has opted to hang up his spikes.

“After a lot of thinking and prioritizing of issues in my life I have decided to retire from baseball,” Meche said in a statement released by the Royals.

“As a competitor my entire life, this is the hardest decision that I’ve ever faced, but it’s not fair to me, my family or the Kansas City Royals that I attempt to pitch anymore. I came into this game as a starting pitcher and unfortunately my health, more accurately, my shoulder, has deteriorated to the point where surgery would be the only option and at this stage of my life I would prefer to call it a career rather than to attempt to pitch in relief for the final year of my contract.

“I can’t thank the Kansas City Royals and their fans enough for my four seasons there and if I have any regret, it’s that we weren’t able to accomplish on the field what the goal was when I signed there.”

Meche’s deal was widely criticized in the industry for both its length and average annual value, though the right-hander muted some critics of the deal by leading the AL with 34 starts in both 2007 and 2008, going 23-24 with a 3.82 ERA for a cellar-dwelling Royals club. But he was 6-15 with a 5.29 ERA over the last two years while dealing with injuries.

The all-time major league leader in saves is retiring.

Closer Trevor Hoffman, who has accumulated 601 saves over an 18-year career in which he has forged a 2.87 ERA, told MLB.com that he was had made the decision to end his baseball career. The right-hander with the disappearing changeup said that he was no longer able to perform to the level that he expects from himself.

“It’s time to retire. It’s time to move on,” Hoffman told MLB.com. “This is more of a self-evaluation. I expect to pitch at a certain level and I had to be honest with myself that I wasn’t certain I could maintain that anymore.”

The Padres will hold a press conference on Wednesday in which Hoffman will announce his retirement and his acceptance of a role in the San Diego front office. The Padres acquired Hoffman in a trade in 1993, and he spent 16 years with the Padres before leaving to sign with the Brewers as a free agent prior to the 2009 season. He spent the last two years of his career with Milwaukee.