Here’s an interesting article about Astros’ President Tal Smith’s second gig — or maybe first gig; it’s hard to tell — representing teams in arbitration cases: When it comes to salary arbitration in baseball, Smith has seen it all. He argued his first cases in 1974, the year baseball adopted the process, when he was […]

A couple of questions about Joe Torre’s new book: 1. Why write it now? No matter who has the moral high ground, doesn’t this sort of thing wear better after you retire? 2. Why the detached, third person narrative and cursory handling of his early years with the Yankees? I’m certain there’s a very interesting […]

The Yankees are sanitizing their new home with some sort of specialized disinfectant coating in order to prevent staph infections. Infectious disease expert Paul Sax, M.D. wonders if they’d be better off simply scrubbing the place down with some Comet. Then again, these are the Yankees, so if they’re going to solve a problem, you […]

The minor league and one-year contracts are starting to trickle in, and Lost in Transactions is on top of it. Also: farewell to Jeff Kent and Sean Casey.

The Yankees are moving their stuff today: Friday is moving day in the Bronx and, no, the crates don’t have pinstripes. Eighty-six years after moving in, the New York Yankees are moving out. The team’s front office will move across the street Friday to the new $1.5 billion Yankee Stadium, which is nearing completion and […]

Orioles fans, meet the man who, for a while at least, will be blocking your dreams from coming true: Gregg Zaun returned to the team that drafted him in 1989, finalizing a $2 million, one-year contract with the Baltimore Orioles on Thursday. The 37-year-old Zaun is expected to replace Ramon Hernandez as the starting catcher, […]

White Sox fans and owners of the 1983 Fleer set will be interested to know that Ron Kittle is alive and blogging. Only one post up in the last month — that being from yesterday, where he tells us that he’s in Belgium, consulting with Belgian (Belgi? Belgi?) baseball coaches. Not sure exactly what he’s […]

Reader MooseinOhio hips me to an amazing post from Boston.com’s Buzz blog: According to NESN’s Red Sox reporter Heidi Watney, free-agent catcher Jason Varitek said he was not aware that teams would have to surrender a No. 1 draft pick in order to sign him and he takes full responsibility for his decision to turn […]

I was going to write something long and critical about Ryan Howard asking for $18 million in arbitration, but then Melky Cabrera’s crazier arbitration demand came along. Darn, it now seems that Melky and the Yankees have come to an agreement, thereby mooting all of the snark I had stored up overnight. Still, this is […]

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