Around the Net in 42 Seconds

Okay, so actually, while there's not a lot of BIG news going on, there's a lot of pretty weird or funny news going on lately.

In the Mariners world, Japanball has an article about Johjima showing up in Seattle last night. He'll be presented in a press conference this week sometime, and will be at Fanfest next weekend. I love some of the quotes from this article, though:

Johjima, who has signed a three-year deal that will make him the first Japanese catcher in the majors, added he hopes to overcome the language barrier through his enthusiasm.

"I want to talk with pitchers to gain trust. Even if they don't understand what I say, they'll know I'm eager to communicate. I've heard Jamie Moyer likes wine, so I've decided to drink wine too," Johjima said.

Johjima also mentioned speaking to Shiggy, and speaking of Shiggy, the rumours around Westbay-san's forums are that Shiggy is retiring, which isn't inconceivable. However, as far as we know, he hasn't officially made any decision yet, and some of the Japanese tabloids just jumped the gun. Whoops.

(EDIT> Okay, apparently Shiggy has now formally announced his retirement. Seriously, I'm sure he'll be able to find some work -- his "other" skills (people skills, language skills, baseball knowledge) are way too valuable these days.)

Kazuhisa Ishii is going to play for the Yakult Swallows again next year. It's really not surprising, given that he played on the Swallows before and grew up near Tokyo. The Fighters (and Eagles) did make him an offer -- and that makes me wonder whether the geographical distance to Sapporo (or Sendai) is akin to the geographical distance to Seattle when it comes to luring free agents.

Remember the other day I was complaining about Seung-Yeop Lee getting released by the Chiba Lotte Marines? Well, they went ahead and re-signed Franco and Pascucci, which is good, but their replacement for Dan Serafini is apparently Kevin Beirne? What? Oh, and to add insult to injury, Lee signs with the Yomiuri Giants. To put this in perspective, it'd be like if... hmm. It'd be like if the White Sox said to Paul Konerko, "Hey, thanks for helping us win that World Series. By the way, the contract we're offering you for next year is exactly the same as the salary you're making now," and Paul Konerko said, "Screw you, I'm going to go play for the Yankees," and the Yankees said "Okay, but we're basically going to pay you the same salary too. But wait! We'll give you a signing bonus to make it seem like more, okay?"

Um, yeah. Stupid Giants.

Hey, so stuff happened on this side of the Pacific too. For example, the Mets traded Anna Kris Benson to the Orioles for for Jorge Julio and John Maine. A familiar sentiment in that article would be that "Perhaps because of his lofty draft status, Benson has always been noted for potential rather than performance." I mean, is he really supposed to be a TOR starter? I dunno. Either way, his wife Anna has gotten herself onto ESPN's Page 3, and it's pretty hilarious.

Oh yeah, and the Red Sox are trading for Coco Crisp, which I'm a little confused about. Huh. It sounds like a better deal for the Red Sox than anything, but who knows. I do wonder about the part where the Indians might try to trade Rafael Betancourt or Arthur Rhodes to the Phillies for J-Mike, though. The Phillies could use more bullpen help and do have a ton of excess outfielders, it's true. Either way, I blame Theo Epstein, now that he's officially back with the Sox again and all. The other good part about this is that maybe the "Reed to Boston" rumors will finally stop once and for all.

(EDIT> Well, if the rumors that it's Crisp, Riske, and Bard for Marte, Shoppach, and Mota are true, maybe it's not a better deal for the Red Sox. Whoa.)

The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim naming trials continue, as the city of Anaheim would really like them to return to using "Anaheim Angels" to describe the team. Quite frankly, so would I -- it's been a year of making fun of the name switch now, and the jokes have gotten old. At least the Angels have done some productive things in the last few weeks, signing all of their arbitration-eligible guys, most recently Scot Shields to 1 yr / $2.1 million, and Brendan Donnelly to 1 yr, $950k. Well, that's good -- Shields doubles his salary, and given how generally awesome he is, I'm happy for him. Donnelly used to be one of my favorite pitchers too.

As far as other players I like go, there's an article about Mark Grudzielanek suggesting he switch his nickname to "Stubblebeard". As if that wasn't funny enough, the article's full of words like "grit" and sentences like "He's a ballplayer."

Hm, I think that's about it. Well, except maybe for Ozzie Guillen becoming an American citizen on Friday:

In his own engaging and unique style, Guillen quipped that one of the questions on the exam was to name the mayor of Chicago. Guillen's response was "Ozzie Guillen." Even Mayor Richard Daley would have a tough time marking that particular answer as incorrect.

Oh, and in that other sport, the thing I have been joking about for several weeks, a Seahawks vs Steelers Super Bowl, is actually going to happen. See, I lived in Pittsburgh for 8 years before moving out to Seattle, so this is pretty crazy. As a matter of fact, the funniest part is that there'll be a couple hours where I'll basically know exactly how far from a television set all of my friends are. Actually, no, the funniest part is how many people actually can spell "Roethlisberger".

I'm not really sure who I'd be rooting for, either, mostly since I'm really not that into football in general. I suspect in a Pirates-Mariners World Series I'd root for the Mariners, but in a Phillies-Mariners World Series, my head would just explode and I'd end up in the hospital for a week comatose. I'd wake up and ask, "Did we win?" and be told, "Yes," and then have to ask, "Which we?"

Book Reviews: "Idiot" and "You Never Forget Your First"

I finished reading both of these books this week in tandem (you'll understand why in a second), and since I'm trying to do book reviews to also keep myself updated on my "what I've read" list, I figured I should write something about them.

Idiot, by Johnny Damon (with Peter Golenbock)

I am sure you've all seen or heard of this book already. The paperback edition even contains COOL PICTURES FROM 2005! Since, after all, this book was originally written and published in the winter of 2004 following the Red Sox winning the World Series.

Anyway, I found this book to be pretty entertaining, although it's not necessarily a "you absolutely must read it" sort of book outside of Red Sox fans, and even then, due to his new uniform, maybe not even then. As you'd expect, only the first 1/5th of it is about pre-Red-Sox Johnny Damon -- growing up, getting drafted, playing for the Royals and the A's, and then, BOOM, free agency, here we come Boston. After that, aside from bits and pieces of personal life details, the rest of the book is pretty much all about the Red Sox, mostly about 2003 and of course 2004. So, if you're a Red Sox fan, you still would probably enjoy reading this book, because it's sort of like re-living those seasons and championships, just through a different perspective. And if you aren't a Red Sox fan, you might enjoy reading this book anyway just because Johnny Damon's got crazy stories to tell about all the guys on the team (well, mostly he makes fun of Kevin Millar for being a loudmouth).

However, the biggest irony I must mention is that Johnny Damon spends a good half of the book always interspersing little details about how "We have to beat the Yankees" or "The Yankees and George are always trying new things to foil our plans" or "We're just proving that the Red Sox are not second fiddle to the Yankees", etc, etc. Lots of anti-Yankee stuff... and where's Johnny Damon playing now? The Yankees! Hee! So it's definitely pretty funny to read some of his sentiments during this book (and about his hair) now that we know where he'll be playing in 2006. On the other hand, he does spend a good chunk of time talking about how awesome Jason Giambi and Derek Jeter are, so I guess he's covered there.

You Never Forget Your First, by Josh Lewin

Now this IS a "you totally should read it" sort of book.

Also, as far as being a bus book, this is about as perfect as they get.

Basically, Josh Lewin (one of the TV voices of the Texas Rangers) went out and interviewed a ton of baseball players, asking them about their MLB debut, what was going through their head, what strange circumstances led up to it if any, what were they thinking when they got the phone call saying "You're going up!" and so on. So in a 250-page book, you have 120 players covered, each around 2-3 pages. Each player's section has a couple paragraphs summarizing who the player is and the highlights of their career, then has a couple paragraphs from the interview about their MLB debut, then has the box score of that game, plus little random factoids about the date, usually connected somehow with the player. (For example, Jamie Moyer's is "Also on June 16, 1986: Simply Red begins its rise on the pop charts with their hit single 'Holding Back The Years'. AUTHOR'S NOTE: 'Holding Back The Years' is precisely what Moyer has been doing since his mid '90s renaissance, pitching into his forties for Seattle.")

Almost all of the interviews are really interesting and entertaining, like Torii Hunter telling how he was put in a pinch-runner and Terry Steinbach messed with him pretending he wasn't going to get off base, and Hunter started running back to the dugout, only to have Terry yell "No, man, I'm just kidding with you!" as the stadium's all laughing like "Ahh, rookie." Or did you know that Mike Hargrove is the first person Roger Clemens ever struck out? And then there's Justin Morneau talking about how Larry Walker was such a big hero to him as a Canadian player, and his first game he happened to be playing against the Rockies, and Walker sent over an autographed bat for him saying "Welcome to the show. Make Canada proud." Joe Nuxhall (the youngest player ever, during WWII) mentions coming home the day of his debut like "School was fine, and oh, by the way, I pitched to Stan Musial!" And Eric Byrnes talks about how in his debut, he was doing okay, getting a few hits, then Steve Reed took offense at something and beaned him, which started a big brawl -- "Welcome to the big leagues. Two veteran teams going at it, and just because I had taken a big swing against Steve Reed, I guess. Whoops."

The biographies of the players are pretty cool too, with random trivia. Byrnes can name all 43 US Presidents in order. Tony LaRussa got his law degree the year before he became the White Sox manager. Kevin Millar himself described his bearded look as "Amish Porn Star". In addition, Millar trivia includes that he was never drafted for baseball, not in highschool or college, and worked his way up through the independent leagues, with the St. Paul Saints. Steve Stone is proud that he and Sandy Koufax are the only Jewish winners of the Cy Young. Alan Trammell snuck into Jack Murphy Stadium when he was a kid to watch Roberto Clemente take batting practice. Juan Samuel named one of his kids Samuel Samuel. And how did I never notice that the Tigers great Al Kaline's name spells out "alkaline"?

As if this wasn't enough to be fun reading, even just looking through the box scores of all the debuts is really awesome, and seeing names of players you'd totally forgotten about. Since this book features people who debuted anywhere from 1944 to 2004, there are all kinds of crazy lineups to see. Seeing the players who debuted in the early 80's either for the Phillies or against the Phillies just brought back a shock from lineups I hadn't seen since my childhood. A shocking number of people in this book, including Jamie Moyer, debuted against Steve Carlton. Heck, even A-Rod's debut in July 1994 made me think "whoa!" as he mentioned that the Mariners pitcher that day was Dave Fleming, a man I'd never heard of until a USSM post this week. And actually, the craziest Mariners-related debut featured in this book was that of Ron Wright, who basically appeared in exactly one game for the Mariners, managed to produce 6 outs in three at-bats by way of a single, double, and triple play -- and never got into an MLB game again.

This book is pretty fantastic, especially if you're the sort who's really interested in players' rookie cards and years and all. I happened to pick it up in a bookstore one day and read through a couple of the players' stories, but thought, "Gah, I don't want to pay $25 for this in hardback" and put it down. A week or two later I saw it in another bookstore, picked it up, read a few more players' stories, thought "Awesome! But ugh, $25, I wonder when it'll come out in paperback?" A week or two after that I was in yet another bookstore, saw the book again, picked it up, read it for ten minutes, and thought "You know, I'll be saving myself a lot of trouble if I just BUY THE DAMN THING ALREADY", so I did that. And I don't regret it -- this was not only a great bus book but also hugely entertaining.

Friday Foto

I took this picture while walking around Safeco Field during batting practice before a game against the Oakland A's. I wanted a picture of the Phillies logo square, I think.


Behind the left field scoreboard, where the righty homers fly

I just think the lines are kind of cool from this angle. A lot of times when trying to take "artsy" perspective shots of stadiums, I end up with some stupid-looking picture of a foul pole or something.

Plus, wow, they have pretty high numbered squares back there! I guess that's for when the Mariners have a 22-0 blowout against the Yankees this year, right?

Okay, well, since I just looked it up out of curiosity -- trivia question: what's the highest number they've ever needed to use on the Safeco Field scoreboard during a Mariners game? (You can cheat if you want.)

Nerdiest Baseball Player List -- Call For Submissions

You can kind of sort of blame Bat-Girl for this one, although indirectly. Today she posted a link to an article about the Twins Caravan, where their bus got a flat tire and stranded Gardenhire, Rick Anderson, Jason Bartlett and Lew Ford in a middle school teacher's lounge for a while, and they sat around chatting baseball and doing crosswords and sudoku puzzles. "Nothing like doing Sudoku puzzles, huh?" said Ford with a smile.

Sudoku puzzles! A baseball player! Wow! That's so cool! I already liked Lew Ford for being a nerd, but that just amused me to no end.

So, as a result, I'm trying to come up with a list of the nerdiest baseball players. This is Seattle MariNERDS after all, right? So, here's the guys I can think of so far -- but I'm sure there are plenty I'm forgetting. I'm mostly trying to come up with people who are active or were active in the last year or two.

1. Curt Schilling

I'm pretty sure that for many people, if you asked "Who's the nerdiest/geekiest/dorkiest baseball player?" the first person that'd come to mind is Curt Schilling. I mean, he's got it all -- he keeps a ton of pitching data on his laptop and sits there studying it in the locker room -- and he's always been kind of dorky -- but, if you didn't already know, Curt not only is president of a tabletop board game publishing company, but he's also a huge video gaming geek, and is quite infamously known to be avid Everquest player, and more recently Everquest II, as he has been known to go around in an EQII baseball cap. Ah, Curt. He's the coolest geek EVER.

Edited in, 1/27 -- from this ESPN Page 2 interview:

Schilling: As a member of Sox Nation, the closer we get to spring training, the less rational and reasonable you are supposed to become. I am fully expecting a two-page column on the current Sox lineup and their projected VORP as it compares to the Yankees.
Simmons: It bothers me that I don't know what VORP is, I feel inadequate.

2. Doug Glanville

I'm calling out Doug Glanville because Curt called him out as being another Everquest junkie. Ever since that infamous Jayson Stark article where Glanville explained that he hit two home runs off Schill for getting his dwarven paladin killed, well, Glan's just been in for the nerddom. But that's not all. There aren't many recent major-leaguers who attended Ivy League colleges, but Glanville got his bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania. They have a bio of him on their alumni page, describing how strong he was in academics and how he not only got his degree in systems engineering, but continues to work in the field.

3. Todd Pratt

If I call out Doug and Curt, the Everquest trio requires I call out Todd Pratt. (Wow -- notice a trend so far -- these guys were all Phillies for large chunks of their career!) But, Todd has also done a memorable mlb.com interview where he talks about his gaming hobby -- from playing Dungeons and Dragons in the late 70's, to the recent trend of MMORPGs such as Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot, and of course, Everquest. (One wonders if the guys play World of Warcrack, but I haven't found anything on that yet.) Anyway, Todd not only dresses up as his D&D persona at rennaissance festivals, but he's even got an entire website devoted to video games and his RPG/etc character Ian Stormbringer. Wow.

3.5 Brian McCann

This isn't really calling him out, but since Tank's gonna be down in Atlanta "mentoring" McCann next year teaching him "good habits" which may or may not include playing MMORPGs, I must repeat how adorkable it was when McCann described hitting that home run off Roger Clemens in the NLDS as "it was really neat", and talking about how he and Jeff Francoeur hung out playing X-Box all night before the game. Though that might not really be all that geeky, relatively, these days -- the other little Braves are also known to indulge in videogames and Star Wars and such.

4. Lew Ford

The man who started this entire post. But even before there was Lew the puzzle nerd, there was Lew the guy who played Doom online, as mentioned in Bat-Girl's article Excuse Me, Haven't We Fragged Somewhere Before?, as apparently Lew went out to dinner with some of his Doom clanmates when the Twins were out in Anaheim once, and confused Gardenhire quite a bit. But even so, people are always pointing out how Lew got a 1400 on his SATs, and majored in computer science and engineering in college, and apparently fixes his teammates' computers from time to time. Even Bert Blyleven calls him "way too smart for baseball". And Lew is always saying crazy dorky things, according to legend, although he would apparently also like people to stop harping about his SAT score. Nevertheless, Lew is a cute goofy nerd, no matter how you slice it.

5. Scott Rolen

Well, maybe not as nerdy as these other guys, but certainly a bookworm. I mean, baseball players reading Ayn Rand? What will they think of next, playing Mozart in the clubhouse? (I'm kidding.)

6. Shigetoshi Hasegawa

If the fact that Shiggy came over to the United States and pretty much taught himself English by diving in and just absorbing the language as quickly as possible isn't enough to convince you of his cerebral nature, perhaps the fact that he's authored several books may convince you? One of which is even how he learned English, which has a priceless cover full of Engrish, but still. Shiggy reportedly kept a ton of books around his locker at all times, on business and on mental strengthening and such. It'll be interesting to see where he heads next in his career with that great mind of his, what with the increase in NPB-MLB relations every year.

7. Jason Szuminski

Actually, I'll be honest, I never heard of this guy until today, but he's apparently the only major leaguer to ever come from MIT. I'm not sure exactly what his status is now either, but he did pitch in several games for the Padres last year. Graduating with an aerospace engineering degree from MIT pretty much automatically labels you as a nerd no matter which way you cut it, though.

Any more?

While I probably read too many books and articles for my own good, I'm pretty sure I have no clue how many great nerds there are out there in MLB right now, and I'm certainly forgetting people. So, this is where I leave it to all of you. Nominate a nerd!

(By the way, in case it isn't obvious, I consider myself to be a bigger nerd than any of these guys, and I'm not trying to make fun of them. I just think the idea that these major leaguers are also whiling away the offseason reading books and playing games is completely awesome.)

Willie Nelson

...sounds a lot cooler than "Jeff Bloomquist" as a title for this post.

Willie signed a 2-year deal with the Mariners today, avoiding arbitration.

Rotoworld says: "Willie Bloomquist's two-year deal with the Mariners is worth $1.525 million. He gets a $50,000 signing bonus, $625,000 this year and $850,000 in 2007. He can earn $150,000 om performance bonuses this year based on plate appearances and $250,000 in 2007. In addition, his 2007 salary can escalate by up to $250,000."

(I'm not bothered by this contract; I don't think it's that bad. 125 Bremertonians per home game at $30 per average ticket will make up $300k above replacement cost in gate sales. I sit next to way too many Bloomquist fans at Safeco to believe there's less than 125 per game. I'm glad they'll still have their cult hero to cheer for next year, unlike those little kids in my section who were in tears when Boone got axed.

EDIT> Or, as I said in a comment on Lookout Landing, "To put it in perspective, for $650k you could either have a 2-bedroom house in Greenlake, or you could have Willie Bloomquist.")

Nelson, as in Jeff, signed a minor league deal with the St. Louis Cardinals yesterday.

MLB.com says: "The deal is a Minor League pact with an invite to Spring Training, and ESPN.com reported that Nelson would make $800,000 if he makes the big league club."

So, I guess we're keeping Shotgun Willie, and Jeff Nelson is On The Road Again.

If it weren't for those four bad starts, eh?

Over on USSM today, Derek pointed out an article on the Hardball Times by Craig Burley called Phranklin, which is an interesting read, regardless of whether you're a Mariners or Phillies fan, or just like to read people discussing whether a particular pitcher is bad or seems bad.

The upshot of the THT article is that "Pat Gillick claims if you just remove Ryan Franklin's four awful starts, he really wasn't that bad a pitcher" -- and Burley sets out to prove that no, really, he still was that bad a pitcher. Which makes you wonder whether it's a valid claim at all, and contrariwise, how much worse would a good pitcher be if you just took out a few of their good starts?

Well, because I just finished tallying up the 1940 game log for Hughie Mulcahy tonight (though, sadly, my numbers, the NYT season numbers, and baseball-reference's numbers don't agree -- I have him at 91 walks and 81 strikeouts, NYT had him at 90 and 81, and b-ref has him at 92 and 81; I'm going to check the Baseball Encyclopedia tomorrow), let's see if I can do this four-worst and four-best thing on him. Since, after all, my original thought was that he wasn't such a bad pitcher either, but was just cursed by run support and by being on the 1930's Phillies. This is a guy who got named to the 1940 All-Star team despite a 7-10 record at the break, who would work his way to a 12-10 record before dropping 12 straight decisions to go 13-22 for the season.

Here's Hugh Mulcahy in 1940, with all his games, and then adjusted to remove his four worst starts - I'm using baseball-reference's numbers for now; I added in FIP and WHIP to Craig Burley's numbers:

          GS  W-L    IP      H   R   ER  HR  BB  SO  ERA   FIP   WHIP
Real      36  13-22  280    283 141  112 12  91  82  3.60  4.15  1.336
Adjusted  32  13-18  263.7  253 111  83  9   80  77  2.83  3.97  1.263

For the day, Mulcahy really wasn't so bad a pitcher, if you think about it. In 1940, you could lead the NL in K/9 with less than 5 (as opposed to today's near-10s), could lead in K/BB in the mid-2's... of course, there weren't really relief pitchers back then, either, at least not as we know them today. (The guys leading the leagues in saves had 7.) The AL had slightly higher numbers to lead their pitchers that year - well, higher K/9 but lower K/BB and such.

Yes, a guy with a 2.83 ERA still would have lost 18 games. Why? Because the Phillies that year suuuuuuuuuucked. This is a team that scored 494 runs, allowed 750 (87 of which were unearned -- Bobby Bragan alone made 49 errors that year in 132 games) and averaged 3.23 runs scored per game. As I calculated it, the team scored 115 runs of support while Mulcahy was on the mound, and he allowed 141 runs total, 112 of which were actually earned.

If you calculate the Pythagorean expected W/L on his games, real and adjusted for removing the 4 worst:

             RA    RS     PW-PL          ER      RS      PW-PL
Real        141   115     14-21          112    115      18-18
Adjusted    111   109     16-16           83    109      20-12

Ahh, and there he is, a 20-game winner, if not for all those damn errors and those four bad outings! The funniest part is, there was an article in the July 31, 1940 New York Times actually saying "Will Mulcahy be the first 20-game winner the Phillies have had in the last 24 years?" Naturally, that was right before his 12-game losing streak.

Now, I'm going to do this the other way, taking out his four best starts (I'm going on earned runs to pick them -- he had three shutouts, and I'm including what I thought was his best start outside them -- a 13-inning complete game on May 23 where he gave up 15 hits, walked none, struck out 10, and of course, the game-losing run came in on Chuck Klein's error):

          GS  W-L    IP    H   R   ER  HR  BB  SO  ERA   FIP   WHIP
Real      36  13-22  280  283 141 112  12  91  82  3.60  4.15  1.336
Adjusted  32  10-21  240  250 137 109  11  85  67  4.08  4.30  1.396

             RA    RS     PW-PL          ER      RS      PW-PL
Real        141   115     14-21          112    115      18-18
Adjusted    137    99     11-21          109     99      15-17

Hmm. Yeah. Still bad, of course, but really not as atrociously bad as one would expect a guy to be to win a moniker like "Losing Pitcher". And if he'd been playing on a team like the Pirates where they were averaging 5.19 runs scored per game, he might have even had a .500 record.

You can't compare Losing Pitcher Franklin and Losing Pitcher Mulcahy easily, to be honest, but I'm working on it. They both definitely had one thing in common: they went out there and threw a metric crapload of innings for a pathetically bad team (albeit one with a much better defense, that's for sure) and came out looking much the worse for the wear.

Blog Cabins, falling down

This is a bit of a meta-post. I use my "Baseball Blogs" list in the sidebar of this blog as my "blogs I check almost every day" list, so as a result I recently culled off a few blogs because I was sad that I'd keep looking there and see no new posts. I used "hasn't posted in over a month" as my culling criteria; they're just commented out though, as I expect several blogs to start up again once Spring Training is underway. Notably, I took off the Seattle PI blog, Marty's Mariners, and, sadly, my "blog sister" Moira's Mariner Housewife... hopefully she'll start posting again next season? Anyone hear from her lately?

Actually, are there any other female-written Mariners blogs that slipped past my radar? Aside from msb being a prolific USSM super-reader-and-commenter, I'm largely unaware of any female influences on the M's blogosphere these last few months. (Hell, I'm not even sure *I* count as an "influence", although I've realized that there may actually be more than two or three people who read this thing regularly these days.)

Anyway, the actual reason I'm writing this post is -- does anyone know what happened to the Ball-Wonk? I really enjoyed reading his blog, even if it is about the Nats, and as far as I can tell, he hasn't posted since December 9th, with no particular indication of going on vacation or anything. I did send him email a while back and never got a response, so I'm curious what's up.

(EDIT> Ironically, the day I post "Where the hell is Ball-Wonk?" is the day Ball-Wonk decides to resurface to the blogosphere. So, that's answered, at least.)

Whole Lotte Shakin' Going On

Chiba releases Seung-Yeop Lee

I was a little disappointed when Dan Serafini ended up leaving the Marines to go sign with Orix, but Lee being released was a bit more of a shock to me; I was under the impression he'd agreed to a contract for next year.

Yeah, I know .260/.315/.551 might not make him Superman, but his 30 HR and 82 RBI led the Marines this year, and he pretty much did catapult them into the Japan Series, as well as attract a whole ton of Korean fans to Chiba Marine stadium. Lee (who set the single-season record for home runs in Korea) coming to Japan was kind of like Hideki Matsui coming to the US; it'll be interesting to see if he can also make the jump to MLB, but my guess is the Giants or some other NPB team will get him instead, at least this year. Still, I think Lotte should have offered him more money to stay with them -- when he hits 10 home runs in Chiba Stadium as part of another team, they'll be sorry.

I dunno, the free agent movement hasn't been that interesting lately. Danny Miceli, who seemed to be at the end of his road when he was sucking it up for Yomiuri last year, apparently signed a two-year, $1.5 million deal with the Devil Rays, and Kevin Millar signed with the Orioles for 1 year and somewhere around $2 million; the question is, is he Jeff Conine's backup or is Jeff Conine his backup? I'm not sure, but I've heard that Millar's got the better singing voice of the two, so let's hope he gets the lead vocals.