We’ve given you in depth analysis of the Jason Bay signing, but sometimes less is more. Here was Rob Neyer’s take within minutes of the announcement, focusing on how, despite Bay’s apparent preferences, he wound up with the Mets instead of the Red Sox: We can probably figure Bay’s pride was a factor, along with…

Amazin’ Avenue, via Pat Andriola, says that ESPN 1050 is saying that the Mets have signed Bengie Molina.  No one else has this yet, but it wouldn’t be terribly unexpected if it happened.  Last we heard they were fighting over length-of-deal, with Molina wanting three years and the Mets wanting one year plus an option.…

How thin? I’m going to base it on a single tweet from MSG Network’s Tina Cervasio, who said that she saw Jim Thome in a suburban Detroit hotel a few minutes ago.  Does that mean Thome is talking to the Tigers? Hey, why not!  TMZ is getting into sports gossip, you know. If that works…

Derrick Goold of the Post-Dispatch, passing along Mark DeRosa’s answer to a question about the Cardinals never getting around to making him an offer this winter: “I was just tired of being a lot of teams’ Plan B.” Can’t say as I blame him. No one wants to be stepped over. People want to go…

If there was ever a winter for the Mets to forgo their obsession with stars and improve their depth instead, this was the one. Injuries practically everywhere on the diamond devastated the team in 2009, forcing the team to turn to such non-entities as Angel Berroa, Lance Broadway and Wilson Valdez. It’s certainly true that…

We’ll have more analysis of the Bay signing later — my favorite reader comment so far compares it to the Mets getting Kevin McReynolds in 1987 — but in the meantime, know that it’s not necessarily a done deal.  We passed along reports over a month ago that Bay’s health might be a concern. Jerry…

In response to my article earlier this afternoon comparing Matt Holliday and Jason Bay, several commenters focused on the fact that Bay out-performed Holliday in their respective time as American Leaguers. In fact, one commenter went so far as to say that Holliday “stunk” during his brief AL stint. For several years now there’s been…

UPDATE: Joel Sherman tweets that it’s a four year, $66 million deal, but with an “easy vest” for a fifth year.  Depending how easy, it may as well be a five year deal. 2:14 P.M: WFAN’s Mike Francesa just announced that the Mets have signed Jason Bay pending a physical. No details yet — Francesa…

Given how territorial New Yorkers seem to be, maybe that whole bring a third team to New York thing is too dangerous an idea: A baseball fan threatened to kill a stranger who was wearing a Los Angeles Dodger’s hat in a Brooklyn diner yesterday. According to the Post, 38-year-old suspect Marcos Esteban — who…

I’ve been planning to write something touting Barry Larkin’s Hall of Fame candidacy because he’s one of several deserving players on this year’s ballot not getting enough love, but in the meantime here’s the next best thing (or maybe even the slightly better thing) … ESPN.com’s Jayson Stark used some numbers from an article I…

Most of you probably never heard of Lester Rodney. And for good reason. His claim to fame was being the sports editor for The Daily Worker, the newspaper of American Communist Party from the 1930s to the 1950s.  I read scores of back issues of the Daily Worker for a class I took in college.…

As right-handed-hitting left fielders with big bats and questionable gloves Matt Holliday and Jason Bay have been linked together as free agents. Some teams like Holliday more than Bay, some teams like Bay more than Holliday, and whatever the case one has often been described as an alternative to the other. Now that the market…

Buster Olney has an article up about Scott Boras over at ESPN today. It’s framed with a “I guess we’ll wait and see what Boras does” kind of thing, but the meat of it — and Buster’s probable intention — is to catalog some of Boras’ screwups in recent years.  The highlights: Having Jason Varitek…

Well, they have some budget. I mean, eventually we’ll would reach a point where the Yankees actually can’t afford to meet payroll. I just think that number is way higher than the $198 million they’re claiming to be held to this year.  So why are they sticking to this likely artificial budget? Because next year…

Mere days after writing an article for Sports Illustrated about the Pittsburgh Pirates that he kicked himself over for being “mediocre,” Jeff Pearlman posts about what he feels to be another Pirate misstep: the July 2008 trade of of Xavier Nady and Damaso Marte to the Yankees for Daniel McCutchen, Jose Tabata, Jeff Karstens and…

I think I’ve read two dozen decade-in-baseball retrospectives in the past week, but they all seem to come back to this nugget, articulated today in the Star-Ledger’s version: The 2000s were dominated by steroids and everything we learned about them: how widespread they were, who juiced, who was responsible and how it impacted the game.…

I’ve suspected for a while that the Yankees whole “we’re going to start Brett Gardner in left field” talk was just that, and that eventually they’d sign a big bat out there.  Remember when Bubba Crosby was going to start and then they went out and signed Johnny Damon?  Yeah, that sort of thing. Not…

It’s Edgar Martinez’s first year of eligibility this year. Today Michael Weddell has a comprehensive statistical breakdown/Hall of Fame analysis of the guy at The Baseball Analysts. Weddell believes he is a Hall of Famer and makes a pretty strong case to back it up. I think I’m convinced that Martinez is a Hall of…

UPDATE:  Um, oops. Guess I was too quick to doubt Francesa. Apologies, Mike. Yesterday, WFAN’s Mike Francesa said he will give a “major, major update on the Mets,” during today’s show. Color me dubious that it will be about the Mets signing Jason Bay or even Bengie Molina or something big like that.  Heck, color…

Sharp observation by ESPN’s Jorge Arangure, Jr.:  If Aroldis Chapman doesn’t sign a deal and receive his bonus by Thursday at midnight, he’s going to get a multi-million dollar tax bill that he could have totally avoided. Why? Because, Arangure reports, signing bonuses that are received outside the U.S., by a non-U.S. resident, and in…