Let's get jiggy with it...
Even though Jeff Sullivan thinks Michael Young is the worst everyday player in the AL West and that there are actually 4 or 5 AL West bench players he thinks would make a better shortstop, he frequently has some funny pieces over at Lookout Landing. Here's his Sunday conversation with Ironically Batless Beltre. Adam has a Chan Ho bobblehead that I gave him, but I don't think he talks to it, he just sticks needles in it.
Over at Beyond the Boxscore, RJ Anderson discusses the Kerry Wood signing, opining that if Kerry Wood is healthy next season, $4 million with another $4 million in possible incentives is a decent deal for a reliever. Granted, Wood's ulnar collateral ligament is made of Silly String and his shoulder has been surgically reconstructed from partially chewed Cheese Curls and woodshavings, so I'm placing the odds of a healthy Kerry Wood season at approximately "A Chinaman's Chance," which is a fancy statistical term for "not very likely." Still, look what we did with Gagne on a similar deal last year... rooked the Red Sox. Here's to Kerry Wood holding it together long enough to fleece the Yanks or Anaheim or somebody come the trade deadline.
Pinstripe Alley is interested in a Melky for Rafael Soriano deal. If I'm Daniels, I call Cashman and try to get Melky for Aki, because Aki looks so dignified when he's sitting in the diathermy machine. Also, with Joba, Kennedy and Hughes in the pipe, the Yanks need someone to chip in on Geritol with Mike Mussina and go to the early bird dinner at Luby's with Bobby Abreu and Andy Pettite.
The link leads, eventually, to a story that Adam has linked before, but South Side Sox refers to the Linebrink signing as "Black Wednesday." I don't like to laugh at that whole situation, though, because baseball karma means that if you take too much joy in another team's bad signing, Daniels will trade Teagarden, Andrus, and the TBIA hotdog concession for Juan Pierre and three magic beans.
Along those lines, I went over to Crawfish Boxes to see if I could make laugh on them for any comments about the Doug Brocail signing, but, unfortunately, they haven't said anything yet. However, they did say something which would chill Adam to the depths of his black, sabermetric heart (which is actually an assortment of vacuum tubes and punch cards that play the classic game "Lemonade Stand"). Apparently, they were having a discussion regarding how you demonstrate that Roy Oswalt has been Houston's best pitcher the last six years, to which Stros Bro posits the answer: "His ERA." Stros Bro does, however, acknowledge that Wandy Rodriguez had better peripherals last season, which would lead you to think that he might dig a little deeper into things... but, after bringing up a subject that would be ripe for all sorts of statistical wizardry, Stros Bro concludes with, essentially, "That dog has a puffy tail!"
And, at zywica's request, I ventured into one of the other sports today on SBN, which happened to be... um... cycling. I consider myself a fairly well-read guy, but reading this was a little like reading James Joyce or Gravity's Rainbow or something, in that I needed some companion literature to go with it. I knew I was in over my head within two sentences, when the author starting referring to some controversy that is causing him not to buy Audi or Giant (what in the hell is Giant, anyway? That makes me want to go start a company and call it Snow Troll) that apparently is embroiling the cycling world. Between not knowing what in the hell was going on and having to flip to another Mozilla tab to type "define: Diquigiovanni" it was a little like being slapped repeatedly in the face with a French woman's unshaven armpit. I think it's a good blog, because I can tell he's making jokes, but the subject matter is so foreign it's like trying to decipher a "man walks into a bar" joke without understanding the meaning of nun, redneck, pope, blonde, man, or, for that matter, bar.