So I was looking at Baseball Prospectus today and was really surprised by one of the little charts they put up. I'll bet you didn't realize that, based on VORP, Randy Winn was the 11th best outfielder in MLB last season. I know...holy shit, right?

Here are the only other outfielders with a better VORP than the Randinator last season...

Jason Bay, Miguel Cabrera, Vladimir Guerrero, Manny Ramirez, Brian Giles, Andruw Jones, Ken Griffey Jr., Bobby Abreu, Gary Sheffield and Adam Dunn. Not too bad company. Plus, I bet Randy Winn's defense was better than a few of those guys as well.

Sometimes you don't realize what you had until it's gone...

The girls over at On The DL do an excellent job of keeping me entertained. In fact, they’ve actually inspired me to search WebShots and find my own funny pictures of ballplayers. So, kick back, take your mind off of the possibility of Carl Everett in Mariners’ blue and teal and enjoy some pictures of baseball players!

 

Here’s a nice one of Freddy Garcia partying with some girls. I wonder what his father-in-law thinks of that!

 

Here’s David Wright with some babes at a bar mitzvah. Willie Randolph and Howard Johnson were also there, as were Walt Frazier and John Starks. They also had a mechanical bull!

 

Here’s Austin Kearns with some greasy Bengals’ fans.

 

And here’s Grady Sizemore outside a Barnes and Noble that looks like a baseball stadium.

 

Here’s some kid with Kerry Wood’s and Mark Prior’s wife. 

 

Judging from the amount of pictures, Jason Giambi goes out a lot. And by the look on his face in this one, one of these girls is totally pinching his butt!

 

Jeremy Reed’s little brother, Mark, who is a catcher in the Cubs’ organization, has his own MySpace page. Check it out. (You might need to be a member).

 

And, is it just me, or does Brandon Claussen look a lot like Willie Bloomquist?

 

This girl likes getting her picture taken with ballplayers. Here she is with Adam Dunn, who makes girls look really small! The caption to this picture says, "I FINALLY got Adam Dunn to be nice to me... I guess third time's a charm!! :) He was really cool... I can't believe it!! :)"

 

Here's some chick with Carl Pavano (Isn't she in one of those Giambi pics too?!?)

 

Jeff Francoeur at a Pat Green concert:

 

Brian Giles with a nice T-shirt.

 

I don't know who this girl is, but her dad must have something to do with the White Sox and she has some cool pictures of Chicago's playoff run and the World Series.

 

This girl went to "Hot Stove, Cool Music" and got her picture taken with Bronson Arroyo, Peter Gammons, and a bearded Theo Epstein.

 

And finally...Johnny Damon and Tim Wakefield at a golf tournament.

There's an article in the Tacoma News Tribume about the Mariners' "player acqusition consultant," Mat Olkin.
However, Corey Brock made a mistake that is pretty funny...

“Moneyball” is the 2003 book by Richard Lewis that detailed Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane’s reliance on statistical analysis.

Michael Lewis is probably thinking, "Well, at least he doesn't think Billy Beane wrote it!"

Just for reference, the average NL catcher hit only .250/.313/.388, but this is, as the title implies, a trick question. After the somewhat surprising uproar over the M's trading Torrealba, I was looking through batting statistics for catchers and realized that the Reds had a really nice tandem situation going on last year. Talk about flying under the radar...the trick is that the answer isn't one person, it's two people...Jason LaRue and Javier Valentin. They combined to put up that line which, if they were one person, would have ranked them first in doubles and in home runs by a catcher in MLB. They also would have ranked second in walks. Also, for all MLB catchers with more than 200 at bats, they would have ranked 14th in batting average, tied for 5th in OBP and 3rd in SLG. Not too shabby for a couple of guys making $3.5 million combined. All of this while playing in what Baseball Prospectus calls a "severe pitchers park." Man, I love platoons!

As if you didn't know already, the Mariners signed Jamie Moyer to a deal that is reportedly worth $5.5 million and could be worth as much as $6.5 million. There seems to be mixed reviews on the deal. Some people love it and some people think the M's overpaid. I think it's a good deal. There aren't too many pitchers out there that are going to sign one year deals, especially pitchers who will give you 200 decent innings. It might be a little steep for what you get, but you have to realize that it's only for one year and that Moyer's an icon in Seattle. That shouldn't matter, but it does. Looking over Moyer's numbers, I believe his success hinges on who's playing left field for the M's in 2006.

Check out Moyer's BABIP for the past 5 seasons: .276, .273, .287, .315, .319.

It isn't hard to tell which years we had Ichiro, Cammy and Winn, and which years we didn't...
Here's hoping that Kevin Millwood's next!

With all the news about Anna Benson yesterday and her whining about the Mets possibly trading "us," I would like to introduce you to another wife of a baseball player that could easily take Anna's place as "Hottest Wife in Baseball."

Gentlemen...meet Aaron Boone's wife, Laura Cover. *WARNING: NOT SAFE FOR WORK!*

 

Seriously...The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2006 is really good. I'm going to have my nose stuck in this thing for months. Pick one up! I just read Bill James' installment, "The Nasty Dutchman" about Bert Blyleven's case for the Hall of Fame. It's a very interesting article and (thanks to Bat-Girl), I also recently found a really cool web site devoted to spreading the word about Blyleven.

 

Ok, I realize this is a pretty dorky thing to post because no one really cares, but I have to spread the word. As a preface, I have been playing baseball video games since I was only 7 years old. So, during those 15 years, I have never even thrown a no hitter. But yesterday, I was playing MVP Baseball 2005on XBox and threw a perfect game...with Joel Pineiro...against the Yankees. As you can imagine, I went crazy. I was popping champagne and spraying it all over myself and my TV. Ok, not really...but there was a lot of yelling and jumping by myself in my basement. Pavano had a shutout going against me until the 9th inning when Flash Gordon came in Beltre won it with a bases-loaded single. It was an awesome game, one that will be tough to top in my video-game career.

Pineiro's final line: 9.0 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 7 K, 0 HR, 0.00 ERA

There have been two free agent signings that have me scratching my head for completely different reasons.

Angels sign Hector Carrasco

Um...yeah...Hector Carrasco, the 36-year old who spent some time in AAA last season. Hey, I don't complain when a division rival shells out $6.1 million over two years for a pitcher who missed all of 2002 after having shoulder surgery and pitched in Japan in 2004. I just find it odd. Angels GM Bill Stoneman told ESPN, "We envision Hector as having a shot at our rotation. All that will be determined in spring training. Our scouts had good reports on him and they suggested him, in particular as a starter." For the record, Carrasco has appeared in 739 games in his professional career...he's only started 51 of those games...and only six of those starts have come at the Major League level. Again...not that I'm complaining! I just find it ironic that the day I get my Hardball Times 2006 Annual in the mail (which, BTW, is awesome!), the Angels sign a 36-year-old journeyman to a 2-year $6.1 million contract to fight for a spot in their rotation. It's ironic because one of the first articles I read in the THT Annual was an article about the Angels titled, "Getting with the Program," by Matt Welch. In the article, Welch says,

"Scioscia, Stoneman and pitching coach Bud Black have made an art form out of plucking unloved relievers with baffling deliveries from obscurity and converting them into solid contributors. Brendan Donnelly, a strikebreaker-turned 30-year-old rookie in 2002, is the best and most effective example (at least until 2005, when he declined significantly), but Black has also spun temporary gold out of such scrap as Ben Weber, Kevin Gregg and Joel Peralta, while developing 38th round pick Scot Shields into one of the most versatile and coveted relievers in the game."

Who knows...maybe the Angels scouts picked out another diamond in the rough. We'll see...but Basil over at Nationals Enquirer shows that the odds are against Carrasco making the transition into the rotation. Check it out.

Dodgers sign Rafael Furcal

This deal makes me scratch my head for different reasons. First, it seems that the Dodgers came out of nowhere. It sounded like the Cubs had a deal for the switch-hitting shortstop all but wrapped up. Second...with the market as crazy as it has been thus far, how the hell did Rafael Furcal's agent only manage to negotiate a three-year contract? Jimmy Rollins signed a 5-year deal this June. Orlando Cabrera, Edgar Renteria, and even Cristian Guzman got 4-year deals last winter. Obviously Furcal will be making more money annually, but you'd think that he'd take another year of job security. However, Furcal will now be a free agent again after his age-30 season in 2008. So, maybe, he and his agent believe that will be better for him in the long run. Again, we'll see!

There will be a lot more to discuss over the next week because the Winter Meetings start on Monday! This is one of my favorite weeks of the year!

Check out how ugly the 2006 M's batting practice jerseys are. Yuck. That ugly teal color is *so* 1997.