More fun with Baseball Reference

It really bugged me that Olerud's page at baseball-reference had gone unsponsored for so many months, so I decided to go ahead and bite the bullet and sponsor it myself. That means I now sponsor 8 pages at B-R, although only 6 are actually under the Marinerds name:

John Olerud (because he ruuuuuules)
Pat Borders (because he's Uncle Rico)
Shigetoshi Hasegawa (because I like him)
Gil Meche (because he used to be so adorable)
Mike Morse (because I wanted to put up a dumb joke)
Benny Agbayani (because he kicked butt in the 2005 Japan Series)
JoeJessica (to propogate the nickname)
Doyle (because DMZ hadn't gotten around to it yet)

It's funny, I always laugh at those "claim a song" or "claim an actor" or whatever things I see amongst teenager-type blog circles, but in a way, baseball-reference is just as addictive, only it's a bit more expensive.

Anyway, there are several current Mariners who have open pages if you particularly feel like donating some money to B-R. Given how often I stare at numbers there, and use other features of the site (for example, the "travel" feature is nifty as all heck, if you haven't seen it), I don't really feel like I wasted my money. Infact, baseball-reference is one of my favorite sites to just surf through randomly. If this surprises you, you're forgetting the name of this blog.

So, you could get Richie for $35, or Beltre for $30. Moyer is $40. Dan Wilson is only $15. Bret Boone is going for the unbelievable sum of $95, whereas Willie Bloomquist is somehow worth $35.

For $10, you could claim Jeremy Reed, Rene Rivera, Wiki Gonzalez, Shin-soo Choo, Julio Mateo, Joel Pineiro, or even Bobby Bowflex. You could also spend $10 to kindly point out that there's no way Bucky Jacobsen weighs only 220 pounds.

And if you're really cheap, Jamal Strong, Clint Nageotte, and Scott Atchison are going for $5.

(There are others open, like Jeffs Harris and Nelson, or Dave Hansen or Jaime Bubela and such, but I was for the most part trying to list "guys currently on the M's roster or worth amusement value".)

Several local bloggers have claims on some players already. Conor's claimed Betancourt, Evening Perambulations has J. J. Putz, Mariners Morsels predictably has George Sherrill, and Lookout Landing has spent a couple bucks to make fun of Greg Dobbs, Matt Thornton, and Ryan Franklin, and to shout out to their old namesake, Justin Leone.

As a shout-out to PositivePaul, who started this whole craze a few months ago: Blue Eyes is still available, but The Lip is not. Go figure.

And in other fun B-R things, today is Bill Buckner's 56th birthday, and also Craig Biggio's 40th, and Scott Hatteberg's 36th, among others.