Remember when I said that the Yankees and Mets should be treated like movie slashers when it comes to the pursuit of a free agent? That you can’t count them out until they’re truly, truly dead, and that even then you should pour gasoline on the corpse and light it just to be sure? I…

Jack Cust knows that it’s hard out there for a DH. According to Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle, he’s about to re-sign with the A’s for $2.5 million with incentives that could take it up to $3 million.  He made $2.8 million in 2009. Cust was non-tendered by the A’s.  If he had…

ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick caught up with Brandon Webb, who’s down in Arizona preparing for a comeback season with the Diamondbacks. He says he feels fine and is ready to pitch, but of course guys always say that.  We’ll see once he starts to face live hitters in spring training. More interesting were the Kentucky native’s…

Jonathan Papelbon sat down for an interview with ESPN Boston’s Gordon Edes and the subject of his soon-to-arrive son came up.  And I gotta tell ya, I’m really starting to take a shine to Jonathan Papelbon: Papelbon’s wife, Ashley, is pregnant with the couple’s second child, a brother for toddler daughter Parker. The child is…

If you wait long enough, even the lamest stuff becomes cool again.  Tell me Astros fans, wouldn’t you give up the comforts of Minute Maid Park if you could hang out in a place like this during a ballgame, drinking brandy Alexanders and Gibson Martinis and stuff?

Everyone’s favorite complaint heading into the 2010 season will be about how cold and rainy and icky it’s going to be in Target Field and why oh why they didn’t put a roof on the joint. Baseball Daily Digest’s Joe Hamrahi throws cold water on that talk, however, noting that of all of the cold…

Commenter ralphdibny was a young Cubs fan in the late 80s and supports Dawson’s enshrinement even if he agrees that maybe he falls a smidge short, objectively speaking. He may be on to something with this: Perhaps there should be a line on his plaque that reads “While his statistics aren’t quite Hall of Fame…

Any of you ever had to pay alimony?  And watched your ex move in with some rich flame? But they don’t get married, and even though you’re making minimum wage and he/she is eating steaks every night you still have to cut the check?  Yeah, that’s the Padres and Kevin Towers: While former San Diego…

Like I said yesterday, Andre Dawson is not necessarily my definition of a Hall of Famer on a statistical basis, but I’m fine with his induction because he was, by all accounts, a great guy, he did a lot of unmeasurable stuff that made baseball come alive in Montreal, if only for a while, and…

Mark McGwire may not change anyone’s mind about his Hall of Fame case simply by talking, but what if he hits a pinch hit home run to win the 2010 NLCS?  Tony La Russa: “If we’re in contention, we’ll put him on the roster Aug. 31. It’s a nice little dream.  Is it likely? Probably…

Murray Chass is one of those guys who will write something one moment that will make you want to pull your hair out, and then the next moment will make a razor-sharp observation, the sort of which that makes so much sense that you’ll wonder why you’ve never heard anyone say it before. He did…

UPDATE:  Still read the discussion below because it applies to other players too, but for the record, a few minutes ago MLB.com’s Hal Bodley walked into the Waldorf Astoria ballroom where they’ll have Andre Dawson’s press conference later today and noticed that they have a big portrait of him in an Expos uniform set up. …

So tweets Marlins beat writer Clark Spencer. As was reported yesterday, Florida wasn’t really able and/or interested in matching the money Chapman is being offered from the Angels and the Blue Jays. Instead, they were hoping that the home-away-from-home culture of Miami would help lure the young Cuban to south Florida, making up for the…

Stellar Hall of Fame reasoning from Rick Morrissey of the Sun-Times: Dawson, who played 11 years with Montreal and six with the Cubs, was wiry strong his entire career. He looks very much the same today–the same ridiculously skinny waist holding up the same solid upper body. He had one season that popped out–49 home…

When the first reports of Matt Holliday’s deal came out they said that the contract was not backloaded. I suppose that’s technically accurate in that he’ll receive the same amount of money for all seven years of the active part of the deal, but that doesn’t exactly tell the whole story: The St. Louis Cardinals…

This is pretty interesting: The champions of U.S. Major League Baseball could face the champions of Japanese professional baseball in a regular Global World Series under a plan being discussed by the two countries. In meetings with Japanese commissioner Ryozo Kato in Milwaukee, MLB commissioner Bud Selig proposed that the Japanese and U.S. champions play…

Let’s see what the blogosphere is saying about Andre Dawson’s selection — and everyone else’s exclusion — from the Hall of Fame: Jonah Keri: “Yes, it’s ridiculous that worthy inductees like Roberto Alomar, Barry Larkin, Bert Blyleven, Edgar Martinez, Alan Trammell, Mark McGwire and of course Tim Raines didn’t get in. But still: Expo #2,…

We read this morning that the Blue Jays and Angels are the front runners for Aroldis Chapman.  Still, when it comes to big name free agents and the New York teams, you have to go by slasher-flick rules: they’re not dead until they’re really, really, really definitely dead. Buster Olney says that as far as…

I was being facetious when I said earlier this afternoon that Mark McGwire simply needs to talk about the past in order to get into the Hall of Fame.  Bob Ryan is serious: If he ever holds a press conference in his new gig as batting coach of the Cardinals, and if he answers the…

Sometimes the headlines say it all, and that’s all we really have courtesy of a tweet from David Murphy of the Philadelphia Daily News. It’s all about health with those guys, of course.  I have no idea if Sheets will be able to bounce back from his surgery, but he’s one of the few bargain…