We want to wish all of our readers a very Happy Holiday season. This has been a great inaugural season for The Hardball Times, and we thank each and every one of you for your support. We’ll still be talking baseball between the holidays, so be sure to drop by.

The best Oakland A’s blog around, Athletics Nation, has a Q&A posted with MLB.com A’s beat writer Mychael Urban. As you might expect, Urban primarily answers questions about the A’s dealing Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder, and he gives some interesting insights. Urban also talks a little bit about his upcoming book on Oakland’s “Big […]

Yahoo reports that the Angels have just signed shortstop Orlando Cabrera to a four-year deal worth $8 million a year. In related news, Placido Polanco apparently wasn’t wanted by any major league team and accepted arbitration from the Phillies. I originally said that this must be the worst signing of the offseason, but my Fair […]

You’re sitting around your Oakland office, looking at all the shenanigans in the Free Agent market. Now, you don’t have enough money to pay a free agent, but you’ve noticed that starting pitchers seem to be in high demand this offseason — overvalued, even. Plus, you currently have three of the best young starters in […]

Field of Schemes has a great review of a Washington Post article regarding the Washington DC team and ballpark brouhaha. Check it out.

I enjoyed reading about various bloggers’ trips to the Winter Meetings and, I have to admit, it sounded like a pretty good time. Sort of like half SABR convention and half (baseball) celebrity meet-and-greet. All-Baseball.com’s Ken Arneson, however, tells a very different (and animated) tale. If you only watch one flash movie about baseball bloggers […]

Before I’d heard of Bill James or the Internet — shoot, before I got married, had kids and went all gray in the hair — there was Peter Gammons. I lived in Boston in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, and every Sunday the highlight of my baseball addiction came to me via the Boston […]

In today’s review of free agents, Aaron wondered how Jon Lieber could get $7 million a year for three years and Woody Williams only get $3.5 million for one year, albeit with incentives. Got to admit, I wondered the same thing. I guess the answer is in the incentives. Reportedly, the Williams deal is really […]

I keep reading that certain contracts, such as the Benson and Guzman deals, have been bad for baseball because they’ve “set the market.” Poppycock. I like to write about the free agent market as much as anyone, but the truth is that whatever market exists for baseball players, it is far from “perfect.” Every contract […]

JC, who runs the Sabernomics blog, recently attended an economics conference that included, among other things, presentations of baseball economics. One paper in particular, An Economic Evaluation of the Moneyball Hypothesis, is fascinating for two reasons: First, the authors set out to prove that major league teams truly did undervalue OBP before the publication of […]