Links For Lunch

Here are some items to keep you busy while we decide whether or not to devote another entire post to our hatred of the Randy Winn signing:

Speaking of the Winner, Rob Neyer doesn't think he's a particularly good fit with the Yankees. Cliff Corcoran ain't thrilled either, saying "If he has a bit of a dead-cat bounce in the Bronx, he’ll go from being a typical bench player to something of an asset".

The Yanks have some interest in Rocco Baldelli, Johnny Gomes and Marcus Thames but Joel Sherman says they won't offer any of them more than a minor league deal.

Joe Girardi says the configuration of the outfield isn't set in stone, meaning Curtis Granderson might end up in left field after all. /crosses fingers

On Twitter, Bob Nightengale announces that the Yankees are going to hire Kevin Towers like it's news, even though we were pretty sure we knew that three weeks ago.

Mike from River Ave. Blues tried to determine what (if any) correlation strikeouts had to overall offensive production. Sorry to all you Adam Dunn haters, but the answer is "not that much of one".

With his Yankee career all but over, Johnny Damon knows one thing for sure. He's "going to grow an incredibly douchey beard".

Craig from Circling the Bases exposes Scott Boras' failure to spin the Johnny Damon debacle into something positive. Take that for what it's worth though, as Craig is notoriously "irresponsible".

Andrew Katz thinks that Damon is the victim of a conflict of Boras' interest. I have to agree.

Walkoff Walk brings us the baseball tweets of the week. Props to Rob Iracane for using the word "brotard" to describe Nick Swisher.

Hank Waddles from Bronx Banter did an interview with Mike Vaccaro of the New York Post.

Also at BB, Cliff Corcoran grades each Yankees hitter on their 2009 season great detail. Spolier alert: there are a lot of A's.

Our pal Jason Rosenberg put together a volume of some of the dumber comments made in regards to steroids in baseball and lets you figure out who said them via the matching game. If you don't have that kind of patience, the quotes are paired with their speakers here.

Also, the IIATM,S Hall of Fame has a new member.

Can someone please tell John Harper of the Daily News that Randy Winn isn't replacing Johnny Damon? And that Brain Cashman's ego wasn't the reason Damon isn't on the team. And that his picture on the NYDN's website makes him look like Nick Nolte before he went off the deep end.

Sky Andrecheck takes a look at evolution of stolen base strategy over the years over at the Baseball Analysts blog.

Via Baseball Musings, a study shows that pitchers from the South are more likely to plunk batters especially in the name of "justice" or "protecting social identities", but only if the batter was white.