Today’s featured article will be out later this morning at 9:30 sharp, so please stop back and check it out. In the mean time, let’s dive into a few links.
- Our very own Troy Patterson posted his first article over at The Hardball Times recently. In his latest piece, he tries to determine the player with the greatest batting eye in baseball history. Despite Ted Williams, Babe Ruth, and Barry Bonds being among the most obvious candidates for this honor, Troy finds that a long forgotten player is most worthy of this distinction. Yesterday, in the same space, he discussed the golden age of catchers. With Matt Weiters, Buster Posey, and Carlos Santana (among others) joining an already strong core of catchers, I’d like to think he’s on to something.
- Keeping it in the family, Charlie Saponara puts on his hat at The Outside Corner, and identifies the offseason’s biggest spenders, for better or worse.
- Alex Speier of WEEI explains the merits of the Red Sox taking a different approach at shortstop. Surprisingly, only one of the last ten World Champions received superstar production out of the shortstop position–including both Red Sox teams.
- A bunch of great stuff at Over the Monster. Mark Normandin explains that the remaining arbitration cases won’t affect the Red Sox’s offseason plans. Matthew Kory has the details about a humorous encounter between John Henry, Tom Werner, and Mark Cuban. Lastly, Cee Angi tries to put a positive spin on the disaster that was the 2011 season.
- Bill Petti of Beyond the Boxscore has a really interesting article up about trends in negative WAR players. Definitely check this out.
- Matt Klaussen of Fangraphs does a contract retrospective on Julio Lugo. Yeah, it sounds bad, but as he explains; it was reasonable at the time.
- J.D. Drew is no longer a member of the Red Sox. Matt Collins of Red Stockings Thoughts explains why he’s the anti-Nick Punto, for better or worse.
- Hunter Golden of Baseball New England tries to tune out the noise surrounding the Red Sox offseason. It’d be wise for us all to follow his advice.
Those are all the links that are fit to print for today. Come on back at 9:30 to check out our featured article for the day.