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Yesterday Yahoo! Sports’ Jeff Passan reported that Joe Mauer had imposed an Opening Day deadline on extension talks with the Twins. Mauer’s response? Wha?! “I’m not going to react to every story/rumor that comes out or comment on any negotiations. As far as that report, I don’t know where that came from . . .…

A couple of months ago the new minor league team in Richmond, Virginia announced that it would be known as “The Flying Squirrels.”  My thought at the time: “Um, OK.” All is forgiven, though, because they released their logos today, and I think they’re pretty damn sweet (yes, I’m going to make you click through…

Yankees’ GM Brian Cashman sat for an extended, public interview today and Joe Pawlikowski from the excellent River Ave Blues blog was there. He has video and an extended synopsis up over at RAB.  My favorite part is about the process Cashman went through when looking for Joe Torre’s replacement in 2008: He put the…

Seems like everyone is writing Hall of Fame articles today. You’ll have that when the biggest news out there involves backup catchers.  Anyway, here’s MLB.com’s Marty Noble, first on his Hall of Fame criteria: When putting check marks on the ballot, the rule–to me–is to be as selective as Ted Williams with a 3-1 count.…

Could the Red Sox be biding their time this offseason and waiting to score big in the 2010-2011 offseason? MLB.com’s Ian Browne — and payroll math — suggests so.  After noting the blah free agent class this year, Browne writes: . . . if you fast forward to next year at this time, general manager…

We civilians have been talking a lot recently about the injustice of the big market teams paying revenue sharing money to small, losing, but otherwise profitable teams. Today an actual big market owner — the Red Sox’ John Henry — speaks up: Red Sox principal owner John Henry is calling for Major League Baseball’s revenue…

Gabrielle Schoeneweis, the wife of Diamondbacks’ pitcher Scott Schoeneweis, was found dead in the couple’s home on May 20. Schoeneweis had instituted legal action to prevent the autopsy report from being released. It’s now been released, however, and given what it shows, his desire to not have it out in the public is understandable: [Schoeneweis']…

Let’s make it a Hall of Fame trifecta. I missed this over the weekend, but here’s Ken Davidoff of Newsday, explaining why, after years of resistance, he has decided to vote for Mark McGwire on his Hall of Fame ballot: Every era has its taint, whether it’s gamblers, steroids, racism or something less pernicious such…

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,…

Not the way its given out or anything. Just its name.  Blogger Tom Tango asks the question: Well, the writers DO have an official name for the MVP, and if wikipedia is to be trusted, it is named Kenesaw Mountain Landis Memorial Baseball Award.  For those not big on history, Landis was MLB’s first commissioner,…

Great piece in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch today by Bernie Miklasz wondering what Albert Pujols really means when he says he wants to wait to sign an extension with St. Louis so he can make sure “he’s playing somewhere that’s competitive.”  Bernie’s take: whaddaya mean? What team has been more competitive than St. Louis over…

A couple of weeks ago I wrote that the Yankees would certainly re-sign Hideki Matsui because all of the marketing that surrounds him essentially allows him to pay his own keep. Today Buster Olney tweets that Matsui’s marketability is “no factor” in whether or not they re-sign him, and that, for the Yankees, “it is…

For every pie in the sky ballpark deal floating around out there, there’s always a story like this later: Funding to pay off debt on Great American Ball Park, the home of the Cincinnati Reds, and Paul Brown Stadium, the home of the Cincinnati Bengals, is expected to be $14 million short next year, so…

Wil Ledezma (a) once missed time during the season because he ran his passport and Visa through the washing machine; (b) was non-tendered after the 2008 season; (c) wasn’t signed for 2009 until late December, and even then it was by the worst team in baseball; and (d) put up a 9.53 ERA in five…

The Rangers’ economic doom and gloom is almost exclusively attributable to Tom Hicks’ practice of loading the team’s parent company — Hicks Sports Group — with boatloads (and soccer team loads) of debt. Unable to make their cash calls, the group has had to be bailed out by Major League Baseball once already, and Hicks…