Today at THT

The holidays dipped me in scotch, shook me around in a bowl of Chex mix, sprinkled me liberally over a bunch of college football games, and have now spit me out into 2009 with no direction, no mooring, and no frame of reference. It’s Monday, I guess, but because of the vicissitudes of this godforsaken economy, I find myself without a day job, so it may as well be May 16, 1979. Though part of me — the part that doesn’t think much about eating and making ends meet — hopes this state of affairs will go on forever, a handful of purpose-driven phone calls, lunches, and emails gives me a strong reason to believe that it is temporary.

The upshot of all of this is a career hiccup large enough to cause me to feel anxiety and smell freedom, but not large enough to allow that anxiety to mellow into reason and reflection and that smell of freedom to mature to an actual taste. The worst of both worlds, really. On the bright side, I’m not shaving this morning no matter what you say. And I’m taking extra time to read this stuff:

Chris Jaffe (and Repoz and, until this year, Keith Law) go through an awful lot of trouble to predict that which will become manifest a week from now. They’re pretty good at it, though, so who am I to criticize?

You may have been drunk for the past week, but baseball execs weren’t, and Evan Brunell has the rundown of what they’ve been up to. My favorite observation: that Mark DeRosa is the Indians’ new Casey Blake. I’m guessing this doesn’t make Blake all that happy.

Finally, over at Fantasy Focus, Derek Carty reminds us that the level of a competition a player faces makes a big difference in that player’s value. He explores how we might adjust for that, and calls the new stat measuring it “CAPS” for “Context Adjusted Pitching Statistics.” I’m assuming this is because it was too hard to come up with a title that lent itself to the acronym “CLIFF LEE.” Also, Victor Wang checks out some cheap power options. Think of these players as the kerosene heaters in your aging, smoke detector-free, rundown duplex of a fantasy team.

Things may be slightly weird around here until my employment situation works itself out, as I’m going to be Mr. Mom for a while. On the one hand, watching and playing with my kids takes less time than legal work does, so you may think that I’ll be increasing posting frequency. On the other hand, hanging out with my kids is far more enjoyable than the legal work, so there’s reason to believe that my productivity may suffer as well. Ultimately, however, I think it’s going to be a wash in terms of volume and insight while the schedule itself changes a tad. With the luxury of the post-lunch office lull no longer at my disposal, I may post more in the evenings. Then again, maybe not.

All I can say for certain is that if I’m not immediately on top of the story about Joe Shlabotnik signing a multi-year deal with the Mudville Nine the minute it happens, well, that’s just how the world is going to work for a bit. The kids have to get dropped off at preschool and they have to eat their lunch, and I’m the one doing the dropping and spreading the peanut butter. Probably doesn’t matter, though, because from what I understand, all of you young hipsters are reading the feeds these days as opposed to constantly hitting “refresh” while waiting for me to update, thus rendering the time of a given post meaningless.

This will conclude the meta-content of today’s broadcast.