Baseball Reveille

Good morning, campers!

If you are playing catch-up, here are topics we discussed in Right Field over the past seven days:

• The need to take sample size into account
• The greatness of Stan Musial
• A Barry Bonds trial update
• The likelihood of contraction
• The Yankees and Red Sox (Shock of shocks!)
• Milwaukee’s Miller Park
• Andrew McCutchen and his Pirates
• Manny Ramirez, pre-retirement
• A Rotisserie story
• Alec Baldwin versus John Krasinski

And here is some other interesting stuff that transpired:

• An advance copy of a book about Musial will reveal that the Cardinals legend has been battling Alzheimer’s Disease for several years.
• There is no one out and speedy runners are on first and second of an extra inning game. The batter hits a deep fly down the right-field line, but the ball is clearly foul. If you are the right fielder, do you let the ball drop? Scott Cousins did. Michael Jong of Marlin Maniac analyzed the decision.
• Sam Fuld might have made the catch of the year at The Cell on Saturday afternoon, but check out the White Sox fan who raced over to congratulate curse out the right fielder. Stay classy, South Siders!
• Given a choice, Pedro Martinez told The New York Times’ Joe Brescia that he would enjoy finishing his spectacular career in a Red Sox uni.
• Speaking of awesome pitching, has it really been 30 years since Fernando Valenzuela pitched in his first Major League game? Jon Weisman published a retrospective.
• Dave Cameron of FanGraphs explained the site’s new “minus” stats.
• Brien at IIATMS asked, “Does [Brett] Gardner take too many strikes?”