I have a peculiar fascination with Adam's Twitter correspondence, in part because T.R. Sullivan's mailbag and the DMN chats are always such founts of idiocy while the LSB comments are... well, founts of a different, non-baseball-related variety of idiocy (looking forward to the Ender's Game movie, indeed). I am always thus befuddled by Adam's exchanges with followers who are apparently not aware of the sabermetric inclinations of LSB.
The other day Adam was arguing with someone who believed Delmon Young would be an improvement over David Murphy, which would have caused him to crash out to the command prompt if not for our annual New Year's overhaul of his vacuum tubes. I think the correspondent eventually settled on the position that Young would be a reasonable platoon partner for Murphy, which is a defensible if still terrible opinion.
So I was interested to see that the Phillies signed Delmon Young Tuesday to a contract that includes provisions that he will receive performance bonuses for staying under 230 pounds at the beginning of the season and under 235 pounds towards the end of the season. Young apparently has trouble keeping his weight under control during the season due to clubhouse food, room service, and "good luck cakes," which I had no idea was even a thing.
Interestingly, Delmon Young and his good luck cakes join Domonic Brown, former Rangers Laynce Nix and John Mayberry, and Darin Ruf as candidates for the Phillies' corner outfield spots, of which there are only two the last time I checked. An embarrassment of riches they are not, though it's possible Philadelphia is trying to corner the market in strikeouts.
I think I'm going to like Dave Magadan, who worked with Leonys Martin, Jurickson Profar, Engel Beltre and Jorge Alfaro this week. He said, after working with Profar, that he has a lot of positive energy and that Magadan couldn't relate to feeling that way when was 19 years old. Magadan is not the type who would enthusiastically participate in a corporate Hawaiian Shirt Friday, I don't think.
T.R. Sullivan, in preparation for MLB's unveiling of their top 100 prospects list, has a list of the top 10 catching prospects. Alfaro clocks in at number five, though I've been bitten by so many Ranger catching prospects I'll never believe in one again, and, besides, catchers in today's testing regime are boring. One of the good things you can say about Winstrol is that it produced some really great catchers.
The DMN has been running a prospect primer series, the most recent of which are Nomar Mazara (because we all love power prospects with contact issues), Ronald Guzman (and questionable bat speed), and Lewis Brinson (and poop-tons of strikeouts).
Jurickson Profar hasn't decided if he'll play for the Netherlands in the World Baseball Classic, because he wants the opportunity to Wally Pipp the hell out of Ian Kinsler in Spring Training.
The Rangers are considering the possibility of hiring an assistant hitting coach for Dave Magadan, the primary responsibilities of which are to obscure the batters' view of Ron Washington when Washington's software goes into a recursive bunt loop.
AJ Pierzynski sold his home in Chicago for $1.7 million.
Durrett continues his position outlook series by looking at Ogando in the number four spot of the rotation.
That's all I've got. Here's Karl Pilkington in China.