Archives › 2009 › December

Brian Schneider has been a starter for basically his entire career, but the 33-year-old catcher will now back up Carlos Ruiz after signing a two-year contract with the Phillies this afternoon. While one Philadelphia newspaper suggests that Schneider passed up a chance to start for several other teams in order to join his hometown Phillies,…

Reader CasEjonz, reacting to Hal Bodley’s “Roberto Alomar is no first ballot Hall of Famer” rebop, notes that the writers are way worse when it comes to this stuff than even I suggested. Take the complete lack of unanimous Hall of Fame votes: To this point, Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan are the closest to…

And he’s into the idea: “They’ve asked me if I think I could play shortstop,” Pedroia says. “They’ve put it out there and I’ve told them I’m all for it. I can do it. I can’t wait for Tito [Terry Francona] to call me and ask, ‘Can you do it?’ I can do it. I…

Pardon me, I have a little something in my eye. Must be dust: Putting their money where their hearts are, the Angels have voted to send a full share of their postseason purse to the estate of Nick Adenhart, the young pitcher whose death in an auto accident on April 9 stunned the organization and…

Starting tonight, teams will decide whether or not to tender arbitration offers to their free agents. A non-tender means that a guy can walk without draft pick compensation. In the past there wasn’t a lot of risk to offering guys arbitration because most of them wanted to test the market. It’s a lot tougher out…

Buster Olney is reporting this morning that Roy Halladay will not approve or even entertain any trades after spring training begins.  That means no deadline deals. That means that the Jays had better act now if they want anything of value for the guy. Nice to see that Halladay and his folks are making this…

Heyman tweets: alex cora’s financial breakdown: 50 grand for ballplaying, $1.95 mil for being a helluva nice guy. Funny. A bit unfair given Cora’s production compared to other utility guys, but funny.

Via my buddy Jay at Fack Youk! comes a link to a wonderfully awful column from Jay Sherman at the New York Post. His beef: A-Rod, and not Jeter, should have won SI’s Sportsman of the Year Award: What’s next for Jeter? An Oscar? An Emmy? The Nobel Peace Prize? This is not to dump…

MLB.com’s Hal Bodley repeats a bit of nonsense you tend to hear at Hall of Fame voting time, and that’s that some players are “first ballot Hall of Famers” and some aren’t: I’m wrestling with whether to check Roberto Alomar’s box. Alomar’s the most likely of those being considered for the first time to make…

The New York Times’ Tyler Kepner thinks that the Yankees may pass up the chance to trade for Roy Halladay: Don’t expect the Yankees to make their Halladay strategy public – why not keep other teams guessing? – but the early prediction here is that they will not get him. History is a guide, and…

Dejan Kovacevic is reporting that the Pirates are interested in Justin Duchscherer, though they don’t know if they’d use him in a starting or a relief role.  Probably depends on the state of his surgically-repaired hip and elbow, not to mention his psyche. My first impulse was to make some sort of “pitching for the…

Ken Rosenthal reports that the Mets have hired Wayne Krivsky to be a special assistant to Omar Minaya. Krivsky is a former Reds GM and is currently a special assistant to Orioles GM Andy MacPhail. Krivsky’s real baseball bonafides, however, come from his time with the Twins.  As assistant GM to Terry Ryan in Minnesota,…

A source told Yahoo! Sports’ Jeff Passan that Joe Mauer will set an Opening Day deadline for extension talks with the Twins. If a multiyear deal cannot be completed by the end of spring training and the report holds true, Mauer would become a free agent after next season. Twins GM Bill Smith hasn’t seemed…