Good morning.

Here are several links from the past week that will make the second Monday of March a bit more bearable:

• Bill Baer of ESPN’s SweetSpot examines Chris Sale’s contract extension and concludes that the White Sox got a bargain.
• Meanwhile, John Lackey returns to the Red Sox rotation after Tommy John surgery but Full Spectrum Baseball’s Will Emerson explains that is hardly reason for the Nation to cheer.

• A hockey match brawl broke out in the top of the ninth of the WBC first-round game between Canada and Mexico. Amazingly, the tournament organizers elected not to suspend any of the melee participants:

“Because at least one club — and potentially both — will not advance to the second round, WBCI has determined that disciplinary measures would not have a meaningful corrective impact,”

• Closer Mariano Rivera announced at a press conference that he will retire after the 2013 season. A couple of related threads at Baseball Think Factory feature occasionally intense exchanges about Rivera’s value to the Yankees as well as about the value of the closer role itself.
• As for the franchise, Rany Jazayerli of Grantland informs readers why “the end of the Yankees’ evil empire” is nearly upon us.
• In an interesting Q&A that David Laurila of Fangraphs had with Farhan Zaidi, the director of baseball operations for the A’s describes why proprietary information is so important to his club:

Analytics, today, is kind of like 30 guys with 30 radar guns: That’s not meant as disrespect to scouts. I go out and scout, and a lot of times I’m one of the guys holding up a gun. It’s more of an analogy to recognizing what data is commoditized, and what data really gives you a competitive advantage. Knowing that — knowing when you’re using data that other teams have access to, versus data that is legitimately proprietary — is an important point to be able to recognize.

Everybody is holding up the gun and everybody writes down the reading like everyone is collecting performance data and evaluating it. There’s a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes that every team is doing individually, but really, much of that exercise is just running in place.

The question of what you’re doing that other teams aren’t is a tough question. You have to give your competitors respect. A lot of things you’re thought about, they probably have as well. You have to try to go a step beyond and do it better.

• Thanks to the research of Laurila’s colleague, Jeff Sullivan, we now know that Gio Gonzalez’s impressive 2012 campaign included the most strikeouts of opposing pitchers, 41, since 1972, when fellow southpaw Steve Carlton K-ed 44 and Nolan Ryan punched out 42.
• The Rawlings Sporting Goods Company and Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) have announced a new collaboration which will add an analytical dimension to the Gold Glove Awards. According to a SABR press release:

As part of the multi-year collaboration beginning with the 2013 season, SABR will develop an expanded statistical resource guide that will accompany the Rawlings Gold Glove Award ballots sent to major league-level managers and coaches each year. In addition, SABR will immediately establish a new Fielding Research Committee tasked to develop a proprietary new defensive analytic called the SABR Defensive Index™, or SDI™. The SDI will serve as an “apples-to-apples” metric to help determine the best defensive players in baseball exclusively for the Rawlings Gold Glove Award and Rawlings Platinum Glove Award selection processes. The collaboration also installs SABR as the presenting sponsor of the Rawlings Platinum Glove Award.

• Matt Welch, editor in chief of Reason, is also an occasional contributor to Halos Heaven, a popular Angels blog. In his latest post, Welch excoriates a former sports editor of the Los Angeles Times for penning the “most inexcusably inaccurate, willfully ignorant, petulantly anti-journalistic columns I have ever read about the game of baseball.”

• For those who have yet to draft for their Rotisserie teams, Ray Guilfoyle of Fake Teams reveals his revised 2013 list of the top 200 players and features Ryan Braun at no. 1.

That’s it. Have a walk-off week!

ESPN New York’s Adam Rubin gives us the skinny on how the Mets are handling the death of Hugo Chávez:

Here’s how the Marlins responded, via Manny Navarro of the Miami Herald:

The Venezuelan national team, which lost to the Marlins 6-5 on Tuesday and will play the Cardinals on Wednesday afternoon before heading to Puerto Rico for WBC tournament pool play, requested a moment of silence and that the country’s flag be placed at half staff before Tuesday’s game in honor of their late president.

But after consulting with Major League Baseball officials, a Marlins spokesman said a joint decision was made not to do so because “there wasn’t enough time to honor the request.” The Venezuelan national flag stood at half staff for several minutes while the team took batting practice Tuesday. But the flag was eventually returned to full staff.

Really? “There wasn’t enough time to honor the request” that the Marlins observe a simple moment of silence?

Good BS, better PR, and yes, the right thing to do under the circumstances.

Are high-profile suspensions for use of performance-enhancing drugs about to rock MLB in 2013? Jordan Rabinowitz of SportsGrid takes note of a provocative Tweet:

Consider this the bombshell before the bombshell, should this prophecy eventually come true. Joe Bisceglie from Dog And Pony Show tweeted Monday afternoon that four of baseball’s biggest bats, including three New York Yankees and two formerly implicated players, will each be slapped with 50-game first-offense PED suspensions. They are, of course, Robinson Cano, Alex Rodriguez, Curtis Granderson, and Ryan Braun.

Before any despondent Yankee fan treks to the Bronx to take a Greg Louganis off the upper deck, please note the following caveat:

You’d be inclined to be skeptical, and for fair reason — Bisceglie doesn’t name his source. This kind of story is explosive, and deserves tender care before people start going on witch hunts and throwing names out there with no rationale.

On the other hand, please note this caveat to the original caveat:

But consider this: Bisceglie correctly prognosticated that Melky Cabrera would be suspended last season for a failed PED test almost a month before his suspension came.

That tweet was from July 18; the suspension came on Aug. 15. Bisceglie was understandably sour about the haters (can’t get no respect with no sources, dude), but to his credit, he’s been right about this thing before, the Nostra Damus of steroids, if you will.

More here (h/t Baseball Think Factory).

UPDATE: Jon Heyman of CBS Sports says it ain’t so.

Good morning.

Here are several links from the past week that will make the first Monday of March a bit more bearable:

• Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports has a message for players who moan and groan about playing in the World Baseball Classic: “Get over yourselves, and think about your sport. . . . Everyone [except elite pitchers] needs to put aside their self-interest and contribute to the greater good of the sport.”
• Mike Trout, 21, was the 2012 AL Rookie of the Year and runner-up for Most Valuable Player, yet is slated to receive a measly $20,000 increase in salary for 2013. Mike DiGiovanna of the Los Angeles Times provides details:

“During the process, on behalf of Mike, I asked only that the Angels compensate Mike fairly for his historic 2012 season, given his service time,” [Craig] Landis, who represents Trout, said in an email. “In my opinion, this contract falls well short of a ‘fair’ contract, and I have voiced this to the Angels throughout the process.”

Players with less than three years of major league service have virtually no leverage, and most will make close to the major league minimum, which rose from $480,000 in 2012 to $490,000 this season.

If a player and team can’t agree on a figure, the team can renew the player’s salary at or above the minimum, an outcome that can ruffle the feathers of some players and their agents, hindering future negotiations between the sides.

Some organizations reward young players for superb seasons. Derek Jeter was renewed after winning rookie of the year in 1996, when the New York Yankees more than tripled his salary, from $130,000 to $550,000.

After Albert Pujols was selected National League rookie of the year and finished fourth in MVP voting, the St. Louis Cardinals bumped his salary from $200,000 in 2001 to $600,000 in 2002.

The Angels, under second-year General Manager Jerry Dipoto, are obviously taking a different tack, as evidenced by their renewal of Trout’s contract. But that is their prerogative.

• Manny Ramirez looks to be playing professional baseball this spring and summer — in Taiwan. According to ESPN Deportes via MLB Trade Rumors, Manny and the EDA Rhinos have reached a verbal agreement to play with the Chinese Professional League team.
• Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria took out a full-page advertisement in three South Florida daily newspapers in an attempt to give fans a positive spin on the state of the franchise. (SB Nation’s Rob Neyer offered a Fire Joe Morgan–esque rebuttal.) In a subsequent press conference, reporters didn’t exactly go easy on Loria:

The letter you put out Sunday said the buck stops with you, that you can accept some of the blame. But it was followed up with a lot of buts. Where does the blame fall on you in all of this?

Loria: Where does it fall on me? I don’t know. Maybe from last year and the year before my thinking we could do it with what we had, and it didn’t work? And adding to it. I didn’t hesitate when it came to putting a $100 million payroll out there. But when you have that happen and nothing good happens on the field, I don’t know where the buck stops there because I can’t hit, I can’t run and I can’t throw anymore. But, you know, I’m responsible overall, so I guess the buck stops with me. However, it’s time to look ahead. My father used to say to me, ‘Jeffrey, you know why the windshield is bigger than the rearview mirror? Because the future is a lot brighter than the past.” That’s what we have. We have a bright future, and I would like us to rally around that.

Why did you take so long to come out and basically explain this?

Loria: “It’s kind of hard to stop a runaway train. The season ended and I decided it was time to decompress and let all that was going to be said, said. I felt the time was right recently just before spring training started. …

How do you expect fans to show up when they don’t know half the starting lineup?

Loria: “If they like baseball, they’ll come.”

They didn’t come last year with names that they knew . . .

Loria: “Yeah, because they were losing.” . . .

With all due respect, why should fans believe anything that you’re saying, given the history?

Loria: “You’ve said that question in four different ways, and my response to you is we have put together a championship caliber of young players, a large group of them. We’re going to field an excellent team in the next two or three years that you’re going to be proud of. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe what I think.”

Did you repair the image with the taxpayers, that it was kind of a con job with the stadium?

Loria: “Con job? I’m not even going to answer that question. Sorry.”

• Sports Illustrated’s Jay Jaffe contends that moving Aroldis Chapman to the starting rotation is the right move for the Reds.
• In “The Most Overrated Players of All-time,” James Gentile of Beyond the Boxscore awards top honors to perpetual RBI machine Joe Carter.
• Baseball Prospectus released its annual list of top 100 prospects. Interestingly, only one first baseman — 21-year-old Jonathan Singleton of the Astros organization — cracks the list.
• Also at Baseball Prospectus, former Diamondbacks and Expos pitcher Eric Knott pens a long column discussing his experiences with performance-enhancing drugs during his career in professional ball.

• J. P. Arencibia stupidly bravely went cupless in his offseason bullpen sessions with Toronto newcomer R. A. Dickey, according to Chris Jones of ESPN The Magazine.

That’s it. Have a walk-off week!

Should a diehard Mets fan be depressed that Cy Young Award winner and Tolkien fan R.A. Dickey is poised to become a Blue Jay?

Or should a diehard Mets fan be enthused that the Amazins are about to receive perhaps the no. 1 catching prospect around, Travis D’Arnaud, and a 20-year old pitching prospect John Sickels rates as an “A-,” Noah Syndergaard.

Why can’t both be true?

The 38-year old knuckleballer gave the beleaguered fanbase something to cheer about. After meandering through professional ball for 13 seasons, Dickey finally struck paydirt in 2010. After eight starts in Triple-A Buffalo, the Mets promoted him in mid-May and he never looked back. Over the past three years, his ERA+ has been 138, 112, and 140.

Dickey was under the Mets’ control for next season at a meager $5 million. Hoping to (finally) cash in on his success, Dickey went looking for a contract extension, eventually requesting . And yet, the Mets chose not to keep him, a signal that the Mets do not expect to be competitive until at least 2015 and/or the Wilpons reamin seriously cash-strapped.

As Tyler Kepner of the New York Times

Leave it to the Mets to botch something easy, like Luis Castillo dropping a pop-up with two outs in the ninth. When the best pitcher in the National League wants to stay with you for three more years, at a steep discount, you let him stay. Why is this so complicated?

Congrats, Jays fans. The offseason is hardly over, but barring any surprises, the Jays will enter the 2013 campaign as the plurality favorite to capture the American League East.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has the spicy details on the heretofore missing member of the Famous Klement’s Racing Sausages:

Guido, the Klement’s racing Italian sausage costume last seen a couple weeks ago adorning a bar hopper in Cedarburg, was returned Wednesday night after a day of media focus.

The hot sausage reportedly was dropped off at TJ Ryan’s bar in Cedarburg.

Two men — one wearing a hoodie pulled tight over his face — lugged the larger-than-life link into the bar just before 8 p.m. Wednesday, plopped him on a bar stool and warned staff, “You did not see anything,” said bartender Jen Mohney.

“Like I didn’t just see two guys plop a sausage on a bar stool,” Mohney said.

Mohney said the two left in less than a minute and she immediately called police. . . .

Until Wednesday night, the 7-foot get-up had been last seen Feb. 16. At a fundraiser at the Milwaukee Curling Club’s new Cedarburg location, a witness saw the sausage walk out the south door about 7:45 p.m., Cedarburg police Detective Jeff Vahsholtz said. The Italian sausage walked into TJ’s an hour later and also made an appearance around midnight at The Roadhouse Bar and Grill. . . .

Vahsholtz said before the return of the costume that he couldn’t say whether there would be charges for what seemed to be an elaborate prank.

More here.

Howard Megdal of Capital New York has more “You can’t make this stuff up” news from the tragically funny spectacle known as the Mets:

Amid fresh non-news that the Mets are still in debt, Amway, a business known for false promises of riches, has moved into a storefront at Citi Field.

The imagery isn’t great for the Mets, to say the least. Amway was busy settling a class action lawsuit alleging the company is a pyramid scheme at the same time Mets’ ownership group was fighting a lawsuit by the trustee for the Bernie Madoff victims over its role in Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

But the cash-strapped Mets, who only recently contemplated putting a casino next to their stadium, seem to have made the calculation that whatever money they’re getting from the deal trumps any cosmetic problems that might stem from the association.

The Citi Field outpost is Amway’s first storefront in America.

On Saturday, Amway staged a grand opening (or “grand opening”: it got no coverage, as far as I can tell) with the Amway sign just a few feet away from a Mets ticket booth.

Amway is a multilevel marketing opportunity, to use the euphemism, or a pyramid scheme, to use the terminology of its critics. Individuals sign up as “Independent Business Owners”, or I.B.O.s, to sell an array of Amway products, buying them up front while simultaneously recruiting others to join Amway as well. . . .

When a class-action lawsuit against Amway’s now-defunct North American distribution arm, Quixtar, asserted that products were almost always sold to the next level of distributors, that Amway participants were asked to pay exorbitant up-front costs, that well over 99 percent of Amway participants lost money and that any effort to recoup losses were only possible in an expensive arbitration process, a judge allowed the lawsuit to go forward, calling the Amway contract stipluations ”a weapon to harass … and ultimately bankrupt their opponents.”

More here.

Good morning.

Here are several links from the past week that will make the final Monday of Febr-r-ruary a bit more bearable:

• The Los Angeles Times’ Bill Shaikin cites a source revealing that MLB has sketched out “tentative guidelines for a potential move to San Jose [for the A's].”
• Al Yellon of Bleed Cubbie Blue goes into the wayback machine to discover a Bartman-esque play from perhaps the most memorable regular-season game from 1984.
• Peter Abraham of the Boston Globe chatted with Pedro Martinez and discovered that few pitches got away from the future Hall of Fame pitcher:

How many players did Pedro hit on purpose? “Probably 90 percent of them. But it was always retaliation for my teammates.”

Even Karim Garcia [in 2003?] “Not on purpose. It didn’t even hit him, it hit the bat. Lucky bastard.”

Gerald Williams? “Not on purpose. Gerald Williams? No. Karim Garcia? No. Some others, I don’t know. There are some that were in retaliation. Some of them to show them that some things I wouldn’t allow them to do. But a lot of them, you play around it. They understand it too. They know that they’re going to get hit for something that happened. If you disrespect a player, if you disrespect me.”

• Dave Cameron of Fangraphs offers a reminder that predictions and projections are very different creatures.
• Cameron’s colleague, Alex Remington, poses a sober question: Should MLB punish DUIs as harshly as it does PEDs?
• Trevor May is a top pitching prospect whom the Twins acquired in the offseason. According to Tom Powers of the Pioneer Press, May has an offbeat second career going:

By night, in the offseason, he is Mazr the deejay, standing in front of the microphones in the clubs of Seattle. Come baseball season, he is Trevor May, pitching prospect extraordinaire for the Minnesota Twins. He is a hard-throwing right-hander who walks to the mound with just one intention: strike out the hitter . . . .

It’s a hobby that emanated from offseason boredom.

“I play electronic music, house,” he said. “I’ve always really liked house. We get bored at the end of the season. I saw a little toy, a turntable thing. I mess around with it. In the offseason, you have so much free time. I got more and more into it, and I met some guys in Philly who taught me some stuff.”

• Bleacher Report’s Will Caroll explains what we may see from Stephen Strasburg in 2013 in terms of effectiveness, endurance, and injury risk.
• The pitching term “makeup” gets tossed about pretty liberally, so Bryan Grosnick of Beyond the Boxscore attempts to nail down what it really means and how it should be applied.

• Steve Garvey was diagnosed with prostate cancer last fall. In a statement, the former Dodger great says, “I decided on a radical prostectomy operation at UCLA, and through God’s grace it went well.”

That’s it. Have a walk-off week!

Mark Buehrle, recently acquired by the Toronto Blue Jays, won’t be moving his wife and two kids to the Canadian city because Ontario laws prevent him from bringing with him another member of his family: his dog.

Slater, Buehrle’s bulldog–American Staffordshire terrier mix, is outlawed in Ontario because the latter breed is of pit-bull lineage, deemed by the provincial government to justify a “reasoned apprehension of harm.” “He’s an awesome dog,” lamented Buehrle, who spent last season with the Miami Marlins. “That’s what’s a shame; just the way he looks is why we have to get separated.”

Rather than leave Slater with friends or a kennel and move his family north of the border, they will split time between their St. Louis and Florida homes, Buehrle said. His family will occasionally visit him in Toronto throughout the season as well. “It’s something we’re going to deal with,” said the 2005 World Series champion. “It’s going to be tough at the beginning, not seeing your kids, but people deal with it and we’ll make it work.”

This morning’s Reveille has been rained out. It will return next Monday.

The Indians swooped in and grabbed the top remaining free agent on the board, center fielder Michael Bourn. According to multiple reports, the 30-year-old agreed to a four-year, $48 million contract with Cleveland. A fifth-year vesting option worth $12 million is predicated on the former Brave accumulating 550 plate appearances in year four.

Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs is cautiously optimistic about Bourn going forward:

The last four years, Bourn’s posted about the same WAR as Prince Fielder, Ian Kinsler, and Josh Hamilton. He’s done it as an average bat, and there are questions regarding how well he’ll age — Dave Cameron looked at his offense, and Cameron also looked at his defense. What Bourn has done isn’t necessarily what Bourn is going to do, and in December he turned 30 years old. As a guy who relies on his legs, Bourn has a chance of going all Chone Figgins-like. But one can’t deny what Bourn has accomplished, and one can’t ignore Bourn’s performance baseline. He’s been a four-to-six-win player for four years in a row, and that’s the most important information of all.

The offseason additions of Bourn, Nick Swisher, and Drew Stubbs, suggest that Tribe fans will enjoy their new-look outfield, although Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports suspects that Swisher will see considerable time at first base and last season’s center fielder, Michael Brantley, will shift to left field.

Via the New York Post, catching great Mike Piazza’s autobiography, Long Shot, covers an array of topics, from the speculation that he took performance-enhancing drugs and was a closeted homosexual to the on-the-diamond feud with Roger Clemens to Latin ballplayers who don’t make an effort to learn English.

Piazza, who over 16 big-league seasons, principally spent with the Dodgers and Mets, posted a .308/.377/.545 slash line and 66.8 fWAR in 7745 plate appearances, is withering in his criticism of Clemens:

The 44-year-old makes no bones about holding a grudge against Clemens for beaning him during a July 8, 2000, game, and for the infamous bat-throwing incident later that season against the Yankees during the World Series.

The 98-mph fastball to his helmet could have been deadly. 

“I truly believe that if I hadn’t gotten my head down at the last instant, Clemens’ two-seamer would have struck me in the eye and possibly killed me,” he recalls. . . .

“Roger Clemens had near-perfect control. I wouldn’t have batted an eye if he had just brushed me off the plate — of course that’s what he said he was trying to do . . . But to stick it in my forehead, that’s another story altogether.”

Piazza tells how he mapped out a plan for revenge — taking karate lessons and visualizing the next time they would go at it.

“I would approach with my fist pulled back. I figured he’d throw his glove out for protection. I’d parry the glove and then get after it,” Piazza writes.

On the rumors that Big Mike is gay:

Piazza believes the persistent whispers that he was in the closet began after Mets manager Bobby Valentine said in a 2002 interview that Major League Baseball was ready for an openly gay player.

“The whole episode was such a strange, incredible phenomenon . . . I still don’t get it.

“I don’t know where the rumor came from, although I’ve heard many theories, including one that I suppose makes the most sense to me, involving a former teammate and his agent.”

Piazza doesn’t name the instigators, and is vague about how the rumor spread from there. He felt compelled to address the gossip publicly, telling reporters, “I’m not gay. I’m heterosexual. I can’t control what people think. I can say I’m heterosexual. I date women. That’s pretty much it.”

Questions about his sexuality bothered him less than the insinuation that he was somehow phony. “I found it hugely insulting that people believed I’d go so far out of my way — living with Playmates, vacationing with actresses, showing up at nightclubs — to act out a lifestyle that would amount to a charade,” he writes. “If I was gay, I’d be gay all the way.”

Long Shot goes on sale tomorrow.

More here.

Good morning.

Here are several links from the past week that will make the second Monday of Febr-r-ruary a bit more bearable:

• Pitchers and catchers are reporting!
• The Mariners were close to giving 2011 Cy Young Award winner Felix Hernandez a new seven-year contract totalling $175 million, but Buster Olney of ESPN subsequently learned that elbow issues put the monster deal on ice, at least temporarily.
• The Indians scooped up two familiar faces: Jason Giambi and Daisuke Matsuzaka.
• According to Nats Insider’s Mark Zuckerman, the Nats clubhouse this season will miss the positive vibes from departed Mark DeRosa. “Serving almost as an extra coach before, during and after games, DeRosa . . . even helped inspire the Nationals to victory in Game 4 of the NLDS after reading a passage from Teddy Roosevelt’s ‘The Man in the Arena’ speech.” Hmmm, I wonder what words he imparted to the team before Game 5?
• John Gibbons is back as skipper of the Jays. He spoke with Richard Griffin of the Toronto Star about an array of topics, including his transition from player to coach:

RG: The experience of not going on to establish the career that people expected obviously doesn’t mean that you weren’t paying attention, because you did manage in the Mets farm system afterwards and you’ve managed twice now for the Jays. Did you realize at the time, that you were in fact paying attention to details, to guys like Davey Johnson, maybe for a future role. You have mentioned Johnson as a major influence as a manager. Did you consciously pay attention to detail or was it just something that you absorbed?

JG: I’m one of those guys. As a catcher you’ve got to pay attention day-to-day. But consciously, I don’t think I was sitting there going, I want to manage in the big leagues, I’ve got to pay attention to what this guy’s doing. No, but you can tell who’s got it, who doesn’t. The thing I got most from Davey is Davey’s a very confident guy, I’m sure you know that. The players picked up on that. That helped those guys getting to the task.

He believed in it and that’s kind of what rubbed off on me. He’s very smart, always on the ball. He let you do your thing. He didn’t talk very often directly to a player. He very often came through a coach, especially for the young guys. But there was something about him, this guy’s on the ball. That was kind of it. But I don’t really remember noticing, saying ‘God, that’s what I want to be.’ I thought I wanted to get into coaching, but it could have been high school, it could have been college, it could have been professional. But, at that time it was sort of open.

RG: But those attributes that Davey has, of never letting your players see you react, never showing your players when you’re behind, staying on an even keel when times are tough in a game…

JG: Yeah, that’s him.

RG: Communicating with players, not necessarily face-to-face. I mean you’re going to have to do a lot of that with the number of Latin players this year to get the proper message across.

That’s something you said Davey already did. Being in charge, letting guys play the game, just get out of the way, you’ve said that’s one of your attributes. Are you just putting guys out there letting them play the game? Is it your goal to just not get in the way?

JG: I think so. The biggest mistake people make in this game is they try to control too many things. As a manager you have your job. You have to run the pitching staff, the bullpen and all that. There’s got to be some structure there. You call the shifts, but, eventually, guys that are control freaks, it catches up with them. The players are the show. When you bring in the type of players we’ve got this year, guys that have been successful, there’s a reason they’re successful. You’ve got to let them do their thing.

• Todd Helton has earned $156,490,000 over 16 big-league seasons but still has a thirst for cheap wine and lottery tickets. The Rockies first baseman was arrested in Thonrton, Colorado and booked for driving under the influence and careless driving.
• Dayn Perry of CBS Sports’ Eye on Baseball opines that there was good reason for the Miami New Times to be catious in its reporting of the Biogenesis facility linked to performance-enhancing drugs and current MLB players.
• On a related note, Curt Schilling told ESPN Radio that, during his later years in Boston, “members of the [Red Sox] organization” encouraged him to use PEDs. Jed Hoyer, who was assistant general manager at the time, responded: “I can tell you it would be preposterous that [then–general manager] Theo [Epstein] or I would be involved in that.”

• Andrew McCullough of the Newark Star-Ledger interviewed Hal Steinbrenner in Tampa and discovered that the Yankees’ managing general partner, except for his fear of injuries to the veterans, is bullish on 2013.

That’s it. Have a walk-off week!

Now that it’s finally lights out for the NFL postseason — get it, Superdome owners? — may we please pay attention to serious business related to the National Pastime?

For example . . .

Via the Washington Post’s Dan Steinberg, insecure Phillies fans are bludgeoning Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports and MLB Network for . . . changing his Twitter avatar.

Behold, the supposed act of treachery:

The Let Teddy Win blog recorded some of the reactions from the Phanatic’s hypersensitive friends and loved ones.

@Eric_Devlin @Ken_Rosenthal go back to the phanatic! Those chumps in Dc aren’t real fans

@Rodeojones000 @Ken_Rosenthal A better avatar would have been you injecting PEDs into their cheating, 21-game-winning pitcher.

@beef5669 @Ken_Rosenthal Wait the #Nationals have fans?????

‏@mager_ryan @Ken_Rosenthal lets make this clear the nats have one great season and think there #1 us phillies fans ran this division for the past 7 year

@phillyaws @Ken_Rosenthal no way they could come up with a photo of a full stadium

‏@BigDaddy_NOLT @Ken_Rosenthal as the phillie phanatic zooms past them all on his quad to steal the victory! #phillies

More here.

Good morning.

Here are several go-to links from the past week to make the first Monday in February a bit more bearable:

• Congratulations to Cal Tech’s baseball squad on its first victory in nearly ten years. On Saturday the Beavers opped Pacifica, 9–7, winning for the first time since February 15, 2003.
• John Sickels rates the minor-league systems of all MLB 30 teams. Here are his top three and bottom three:

1) St. Louis Cardinals (ranked #5 last year): Strengths: Everything. They have pitching, hitting, high upside, and depth. They have a proven track record of player development. Weaknesses: none really. They could use a shortstop with a better bat but so could most teams.

2) Seattle Mariners (#4 last year): Strength: Good balance between hitting and pitching, strength up the middle with Zunino, Miller, Franklin; potential ace arms; good knack for finding underappreciated college hitters. Weaknesses: Persistent problems with Latin American prospects showing poor strike zone judgment and contact issues.

3) Tampa Bay Rays (7): System was already strong and trade with Royals just adds more. Strength: considerable pitching depth; good mix of players who will be ready now/soon (Myers, Archer, Odorizzi) plus guys at lower levels with high upside. Weaknesses: upper level hitting other than Myers.

28) Chicago White Sox (30): White Sox scouts can find players when given the resources to do so, but years of cheapskate draft strategy and poor non-Cuban Latin American focus have crippled system depth. Strengths: toolsy outfielders, with Courtney Hawkins looking excellent from 2012 draft. Weaknesses: overall depth, particularly with potential starting pitching. It will be interesting to see if new GM Rick Hahn can turn this around quickly.

29) Los Angeles Angels (18): Big drop now that Mike Trout has graduated and other players have been traded. Strengths: decent group of position players with Kaleb Cowart the best of the lot. Several potential bullpen arms. Weaknesses: impact pitching, especially potential starting pitchers. Overall depth.

30) Detroit Tigers (23): Very thin in all respects. Strengths: Nick Castellanos and Avisail Garcia could help soon, and there are some potential role players behind them. Bullpen arms. Weaknesses: lack of depth almost everywhere, particularly hitting.

• While embracing the wins-above-replacement metric as a useful tool, ESPN columnist Jim Caple cautions against relying solely on WAR when evaluating talent.
• Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports wonders if harsher penalties for the use of performanc-enhancing drugs in baseball will be much of a deterrent.
• What goes into the process of teams’ insuring against player injuries? The Economist offers some insights:

As salaries in professional sports have soared over the past few decades, so has the price tag associated with the risks inherent in such strenuous physical activity. Athletes in sports like golf and tennis often buy their own insurance, though those with recurring conditions have trouble getting coverage. But sports teams that offer guaranteed contracts face huge losses if stars are injured, even only temporarily. As a result, the economics of the business are now shaped by insurance markets just as they are by TV contracts or ticket sales. . . .

One big risk for insurers is moral hazard. Players insured against a career-ending injury may have little incentive to make a comeback if they have already received a payout; clubs with temporary disability policies have an incentive to keep a player sidelined until he is fully healthy. Jeff Moorad, a former boss of baseball’s San Diego Padres, recalls a debate over Chris Young, a pitcher recovering from a shoulder injury in 2010. “As a matter of principle, we didn’t stand in his way, and he came back and contributed,” he says. “But the accounting department much preferred that he stay on the disabled list.”

• Sports economist and MLB consultant Andrew Zimbalist talks with the Tampa Bay Times’ Steven Nohlgren on the Rays’ ongoing attempt to get a new ballpark built in Tampa.
• Bruce Markusen of the Hardball Times pens another must-read, this one devoted to the baseball history of the Alou family. 
• Geoff Young of Baseball Prospectus lets us know everything we wanted to know about Barry Bonds and his intenational walks. Among his items of information:

80 This is the number of times Sid Fernandez and Bonds faced each other. Fernandez never intentionally walked Bonds. No one else has done so with more plate appearances. Dwight Gooden, a former teammate of Fernandez, is second with 75.

Paul Assenmacher and Chuck McElroy show up farther down the list. If you needed someone to retire Bonds, you could do worse than those two. He hit a combined .114/.171/.300 against them, with 18 strikeouts in 76 plate appearances. Even then, seven of his eight hits went for extra bases.

86 This is how many intentional walks Liván Hernández, the active leader, has issued in his career. Hernández faced Bonds 30 times and issued just one free pass. Bonds went 10-for-21 with four homers, so maybe that wasn’t the optimal strategy.

110 This is how many unintentional walks Shawon Dunston drew from 1989 to 2002. That covered a span of 1,340 games and 4,435 plate appearances.

Dunston and Bonds played together for the Giants in 1996, 1998, and 2001-2002. Dunston drew five walks over those final two seasons. Bonds drew the same number on September 12, 2002.

• For those living in or near Houston, BPro and the Astros are teaming up to offer baseball fans field-box seats to a game on Saturday, May 11, and an opportunity to meet online-magazine and front-office personalities. Details here.

• NBC Hardball Talk’s Craig Calcaterra provides details on how those interested may help County Meath in Ireland get a field of their own.

That’s it. Have a walk-off week!

Forgive me for not launching into hysterics yesterday or earlier today over the revelation that the currently injured Alex Rodriguez, who admitted to taking performance enhancing drugs from 2001 to 2003, may have lied and continued to use PEDs. Other big-league players, including the Nationals’ Gio Gonzalez, were also implicated in the Miami New Times article. (In today’s Washington Post, Jack Wagner writes that the report links Gonzalez to three substances: zinc, MIC, and Aminorip, noting that it was not “immediately clear what MIC and Aminorip are, or if they appear on MLB’s list of banned substances.”)

Salem witch trial judge Bergen Record columnist Bob Klapisch minces no words in his lede:

Say goodbye to Alex Rodriguez and whatever good memories you have of this disgraced slugger, assuming there are any left to conjure. A-Rod has been linked (again) to performance-enhancing drugs, as recently as last season, putting the finishing touches on his now-utterly trashed legacy — baseball’s all-time fraud.

Writing in Sports Illustrated, Tom Verducci seems to think that this report will taint the Yankees’ most recent World Series triumph:

In any case, the news is worse for Rodriguez than it is for anybody else in the report, if only because of his stature and that 2009 confessional production under the tent in the Yankees’ spring training complex. Until now, Rodriguez was careful to shield the Yankees from his taint, telling the story about how he stopped using PEDs before he became a Yankee — as if it made perfect sense that he used for a last-place Texas team but suddenly would have no more use for performance enhancers upon being put on the New York stage. The story seemed to fly for many people. But now, with this story, the franchise and its 2009 championship are smeared by Rodriguez’s connection to PEDs. 

UPDATE: Does anyone, including Verducci, really believe that the eight players on the 2000 Yankees whose names appeared in the Mitchell Report have smeared that world title as well?

In response, Ken Davidoff of the New York Post reminds us that the article in the Miami New Times contains mere accusations, not proof:

First, what do we actually have here? As of now, we have a terrific newspaper story that isn’t much of a prosecutorial case. We have a notebook with someone writing, “I sold drugs to A-Rod and a bunch of other guys.”

It’s going to take considerably more than that to bring down A-Rod and his pals. For starters, Anthony Bosch would have to confirm that yes, he did write that and yes, he did sell those drugs to those people. Then he’d have to provide additional evidence that these actions occurred. Canceled checks? Prescription slips? Photos of A-Rod? It’s got to be something good.

Maybe Bosch can pull that off, and maybe A-Rod actually would be suspended due to a non-analytic positive. It isn’t impossible. It’s a long way away, though, and A-Rod’s hiring of Roy Black and strong denial yesterday indicate that he’s going to fight this passionately. Which means that this is going to be a very fun story.

Still, is “a very fun story” the best way to describe what’s in store for baseball’s fans, most of whom appear enervated, not juiced, by the barrage of PED stories?

Frequent Baseball Think Factory commenter Ray DiPerna went so far as to opine to me yesterday:

I don’t understand why anyone still cares about this, on any level. The sport will never be rid of PEDs — indeed, in time there is a great chance that PEDs will be legal again and accepted; see the change in the laws against same-sex marriage or interracial marriage — and nobody has any clue which players who have been anointed ‘clean’ are actually clean.

I am not sure what to make of people whose thought process is so confused that they would still think negatively of a player for using PEDs when usage is so common, or, even worse, would think that they have the faintest notion which players presumed clean are actually clean.

While I am unwilling to go along with the notion that PEDs will be deemed kosher in my lifetime, DiPerna’s larger point stands. Why is little attention paid to players arrested for driving while intoxicated or under the influence, criminal activity that jeopardizes the lives of others? Why isn’t the fleecing of taxpayers in order to build gaudy ballparks a bigger deal?

And while we’re at it, when might we find a gaggle of sportswriters demanding that the NFL get rid of its lethal-weapon helmets once and for all?

For those Yankee fans hoping (praying?) that somehow the club will be able to part ways with the hobbled slugger via the insurance policy, thereby wiping away the rest of the $114 million remaining on his contract, Craig Calcaterra of NBC Sports’ Hardball Talk has some breaking news:

As Calcaterra notes elsewhere, for-profit insurance companies don’t exist to pay off specious claims, let alone fraudulent ones.

And wait, there’s still more:

Know what happens if MLB finds cause to discipline A-Rod? He gets disciplined. Know what sets forth the discipline for a PED violation? The Joint Drug Agreement. Know what does not allow for voiding a contract for PED discipline? The Joint Drug Agreement.

Of course the Yankees want A-Rod’s contract voided. It’s a crappy contract. They wanted Jason Giambi‘s voided too and didn’t try to do it after exhausting their options. Or at least appearing to exhaust them. Which is what I think this really is: red meat for the angry fans. The Yankees way of showing them and the talk radio hosts that they’re upset too and, man, how bad that A-Rod guy is.

On the bright side, only 11 days remain until pitchers and catchers report.

The Miami New Times released this shocking report based on the files of a clinic in South Florida today:

An all-star roster of professional athletes with Miami ties: San Francisco Giants outfielder Melky Cabrera, Oakland A’s hurler Bartolo Colón, pro tennis player Wayne Odesnik, budding Cuban superstar boxer Yuriorkis Gamboa, and Texas Rangers slugger Nelson Cruz. There’s even the New York Yankees’ $275 million man himself, Alex Rodriguez, who has sworn he stopped juicing a decade ago. . . .

Born and raised in Miami and starring on the diamond since he was 18 years old, A-Rod admitted in 2009 that he had used steroids, claiming in an ESPN interview that his doping was limited to a three-year window — 2001 through 2003 — while he played under a record contract for the Texas Rangers. Ever since then, A-Rod claimed, he’d been playing clean. He’d never failed an MLB drug test since penalties were put into place.

Yet there was his name, over and over again, logged as either “Alex Rodriguez,” “Alex Rod,” or his nickname at the clinic, “Cacique,” a pre-Columbian Caribbean chief. Rodriguez’s name appears 16 times throughout the records New Times reviewed.

Take, for instance, one patient list from Bosch’s 2009 personal notebook. It charts more than 50 clients and notes whether they received their drugs by delivery or in the office, how much they paid, and what they were taking.

There, at number seven on the list, is Alex Rodriguez. He paid $3,500, Bosch notes. Below that, he writes, “1.5/1.5 HGH (sports perf.) creams test., glut., MIC, supplement, sports perf. Diet.” HGH, of course, is banned in baseball, as are testosterone creams.

Alex Rodriguez and several of the other athletes named in the report have denied any connection to the clinic, but it looks like baseball’s doping scandal is still ongoing.

Good morning.

Here are several go-to links to make the final Monday in January a bit more bearable, unless you’re a Yankees fan:

• Writing in the Huffington Post, Ian Bremmer said he was not thrilled with the idea of Derek Jeter opining on climate change at the World Economic Forum in Davos. In fairness, I am pretty sure that drifting glaciers in Antartica have more range than the shortstop who is entering his age-39 season.
• As for Jeter’s teammate Alex Rodriguez, Yankees’ general manager Brian Cashman believes that A-Rod may be lost for the entire season. David Pinto of Baseball Musings suspects he knows why the hip surgery took place in January, not immediately following the ALCS.
• In his maiden post at CBSSports.com’s Eye on Baseball, Mike Axisa is less than impressed with the Yankees’ talent core:

The Yankees have little (no?) impact talent on the right side of 30 on their big league roster beyond 27-year-old setup man David Robertson, and their top prospects are at least one year away from the show. That’s creates a rather grim picture for the immediate future. Add in ownership’s very public desire to get under the $189 million luxury tax threshold by 2014, and New York appears to have run into the perfect storm that, at some point in the next few years, could see them miss the playoffs in consecutive seasons for the first time in nearly two decades.

• Matt Klaassen of Fangraphs offers a counterintuitive take on the premier single-season starting outfield in the history of the Yankees.
• So it appears that Teddy Roosevelt’s one-time protégé, William Howard Taft, will be the addition to the Presidents’ Race at Nationals Park. Nats officials are mum as to whether Taft will race with his feet or a motorized bathtub.
• Last Tuesday, George Weigel shared his thoughts on the late Earl Weaver. Bruce Markusen of the Hardball Times offered his recollection one day earlier:

From the time that Weaver took over the Orioles until his initial retirement in 1982, the Orioles were a paragon of success. Weaver posted winning records each year, with his “worst” season coming in 1972, when the O’s finished at 80-74 for a winning percentage of .519. In fact, it would not be until his second tenure as Baltimore’s manager that Weaver put up a record below .500. That came in 1986, when an aging O’s roster compiled a mark of 73-89. It was the only blemish on an otherwise spotless regular-season record.

Weaver was humble as far as the role and impact of the manager. As he once said, “A manager’s job is simple. For 162 games, you try not to screw up all that smart stuff your organization did last December.”

Weaver certainly had very capable general managers, with people like Harry Dalton and Frank Cashen supplying him with talent, but he also achieved the optimum with the players at his disposal. He adopted a philosophy that sounded simple, emphasizing “pitching, defense, and the three-run homer.”

But within that simplicity, Weaver enacted the complicated details. He kept note cards on each of his hitters, indicating how they fared against each pitcher, and adjusted his lineup accordingly. He also believed that certain players, not his stars but his role players, needed to be platooned in order to maximize their productivity.

Weaver crafted roles for each of his players. He advised them of what he expected them to do; if they failed, they were susceptible to being replaced. He manipulated his roster like a chess master.

• “Near-Genius Nephew” at Big Bad Baseball evaluates the 48 player-seasons where 18 major-leaguers posted an adjusted on-base plus slugging (OPS+) of 200.
• The Baseball Prospectus staff offers their nine candidates for regression in 2013.

• Wait, are you telling me that, after all this time, Frenchy isn’t real? “RoyalsRetro” of Royals Review clues us in on the hoax.

That’s it. Have a walk-off week!

Now that Teddy has finally won a contest, the Nationals are poised to add a new flavor to its between-inning sideshow known to all as the Presidents Race. 

So … who will be the fifth POTUS?

There was no shortage of educated guesses over at Baseball Think Factory:

• “Well, we know it won’t be FDR. Sorry, that was wrong.”
• “Bill Clinton, with his pants down around his ankles.”
• “Wouldn’t it be cool if it turned out to be someone totally obscure like Franklin Pierce. And everyone’s like ‘Who the #### is that?’”
• “Or make it William Henry Harrison, and have him collapse at the start of every race.”
• “Jefferson Davis. They won’t have to worry about people campaigning for him to win.”
• “Dennis Martinez, of course.”*
• “In recognition of the Expo legacy, Charles De Gaulle.”
• “Maybe a giant Alexander Haig tries to join everyone at the starting line?”
• “I foresee a giant Al Gore head poised on the starting line, when a giant Antonin Scalia head says ‘Just where do you think YOU’RE going?’”
• “Dewey wins!”

For those interested in attending NatsFest, go here.

* Martinez, who played nearly all of his 23-year career in Baltimore and Montreal, was affectionately known as “El Presidente.”