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MLB Trade Rumors has a nice summary of the state of Matt Holliday’s market.  The upshot: he’s gone from an offer that would have paid him $82 million over four years from the Rockies in 2008 to a five or maybe six year deal that would pay him $80 million from the Cardinals, and maybe…

I’m not going to relay every Hall of Fame ballot I see, but since we were just talking about it this morning, here’s Bob Klapisch’s: Alomar, Blyleven, Dawson, Larkin, Morris, Raines. Do I agree with it 100%? No. I still don’t think Morris belongs and I’d love to see Alan Trammell mentioned on more ballots.…

There’s an article up at the New York Times about the 2005 steroid hearings before Congress. Good stuff that attempts to put it all in perspective at the end of the decade. But I still gotta take issue with one often-repeated sentiment about those hearings: Sosa said he had never taken steroids and suggested that…

Dave O’Brien of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution says the Braves have $7 million to play with and still plan on making a move or two.  Possibilities: going after another bat, such as Xavier Nady, who would be useful because he could fill the hole in left and cover for Glaus if he continues to be fraglie…

It’s largely out of his control, but Sam Bordon of the LoHud Yankees blog has a Taiwanese correspondent who says that Chien-Ming Wang has no hard feelings about being non-tendered by the Yankees and would consider coming back once his rehab was over, likely by May or June. Seems to me that if Wang gets…

With the Jason Bay negotiations at an utter standstill, that whole “we think Jason Bay may be easier to sign than Matt Holliday” stuff we had previously heard from the Mets may no longer be operative. I mean sure, Holliday is represented by Boras, but at least Boras will return your calls.  Bay is apparently…

The week between Christmas and New Year’s means that everyone and their brother will be writing year-in-review stuff.  Might as well lead with the guy in charge: “It was a difficult year, but a wonderful year. There were a lot of clubs that had difficulty, some were significantly impacted, but in terms of management, in…

Sports Illustrated’s Jon Heyman set off an hours-long debate last night on Twitter when he revealed his Hall of Fame ballot: just mailed Hall of Fame ballot, beating deadline yet again. voted for alomar, dawson, larkin, parker, morris & mattingly At the outset, let me give Heyman some credit. After tweeting that, a cubic crap-ton…

Not a lot of news today, so why not some links?  Here’s one from MLB.com remembering Billy Martin in all of his complicated glory twenty years after his death. Maybe it’s because he was in his managing heyday when I was introduced to baseball as a kid in the late 70s, but I always thought…

Now that Peter Gammons is officially back covering the Red Sox as a part of his NESN gig, he probably feels a lot more comfortable simply working the Boston sources he’s cultivated for thirty some-odd years, and we get the benefit of it.  He was on WEEI the other day and offered the following Sox…

The Justin Duchscherer-to-the-A’s thing makes sense to me. He’s cheap and he’s familiar and even if things get sideways sometimes this season, he’d be easy to trade or release. But Adrian Beltre? It’s being reported that the A’s are talking to him too (Buster Olney says it’s a “serious look”).  Which seems kind of nuts…

Somewhere there’s a guy who came up with the idea to fasten all of the little parts of kids’ toys to the box with clamshell packaging, elastic bands and twisty wires.  While I’m sure the idea was to make the product look cool on the store shelf, the benefits of his innovation are far outweighed…

Or tweeting, even.  Yes, even the hyperactive hot stove season sleeps sometimes, and it appears as though it has gone to sleep for Christmas as of late this morning.  Oh, someone may still be doing some last minute shopping — at least one store is open, with plenty left on the shelves — but most…

Rosenthal tweets that Juan Uribe is close to returning to the Giants.  The Yankees and Red Sox have arms races involving ace starting pitchers. The Giants and Dodgers one-up each other with marginal infielders like Juan Uribe and Jamey Carroll. Seriously though, he had a decent enough year as a second baseman/utility guy in San…

Uncertainty is not comfortable, so as nothing continues to happen for the Mets this offseason, fans have a choice:  keep their hopes up or go into full-blown bitter mode.  For those choosing the latter course, Bill Price of the Daily News has just what you need: a rundown of the worst things that have gone…

It’s Christmas Eve, so there isn’t a lot of real baseball news happening, so forgive me for delving into quasi-quasi-quasi baseball news.  The news: Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, who met on the set of my most favoritist baseball movie of all time, have broken up after 22 years together as a couple. Such a…

Given that the Red Sox are reportedly making another pass at Jason Bay (or Matt Holliday) despite having the outfield seemingly covered with Ellsbury, Drew and Cameron, what does it tell you about their confidence that David Ortiz will be a productive part of the lineup next year?  Last season when Big Papi took his…

UPDATE: Dejan is now reporting that a Pirates source has refuted that any offer has been made to Dotel. Of course, the Pirates also said on the record — multiple times — that they were tendering Matt Capps a contract, and they didn’t do that. They also said they weren’t going to pay a reliever…

It’s $3.5 million. He can make another $425K in incentives.  Capps had an offer from the Cubs and a late one from the Mets, but he’ll almost certainly get to close in D.C., however, so it may be a better situation for him even if those offers were better or equal. Dejan Kovacevic reports in…

UPDATE:  I received a call from someone with the Greenberg group. They couldn’t explicitly comment because of confidentiality agreements, but they deny the report that there is anything amiss with financing and say that everything is going just fine. Fair enough. The way it breaks down right now, however, is that I have a source…

Jason Bay may have a mystery team courting him, but he’s got nothing on the Phillies who have come to terms with a mystery closer: According to a person with knowledge of the situation, the Phils have an agreement in place with a pitcher that they believe will help fortify their bullpen. The person could…

That’s not me gushing over the guy — my love for Jeter is a private thing — it’s the name of a new exhibit at the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center (“Learning Center?” For Yogi?): The big item on display is the original Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year Award. First given out in…

I took a bunch of Spanish in college, to the point where there was a month or two where I was thinking in Spanish all the time, getting pretty conversational and everything. At that point I should have spent a summer in an immersion program to solidify it. Instead I took a $4.25/hour job taking…

From WEEI: The Boston Chapter, BBWAA also announced Tuesday that Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman has been selected as Major League Baseball Executive of the Year. They say that the Yankees-Red Sox thing is like an arms race or a cold war or something. Pfft. It’s not a true clash of the titans until the…

Maybe it’s not how they drew it up, but Mark Bowman* of MLB.com reports that the Braves were getting very little interest in Vazquez outside of the Yankees as no one outside of his no-trade clause (i.e. the NL and AL West) was willing to pay $10M+ for a pitcher while giving up any talent…