Friday Grab Bag

Good morning, Fackers. I hope Brain Hoch is right and the Yankees are in fact picking up their bats when they come back to New York.

Ben Kabak from River Ave. Blues made an appearance on the Bloomberg Sports podcast to talk about the site, along with the minor league system, Austin Jackson, Joba's ceiling and more. It's about 15 minutes long and quite enjoyable. LISTEN TO IT.

Mike from The Yankeeist ties a bow around his trip to Detroit.

Is an article with effusive praise for Phil Hughes enough to get you to read Mike Lupica? Nah, probably not...

But over at the WSJ, Scott Cacciola wrote a nice feature on Hughes and some of the things that have helped him be successful this year. Greg Fertel from Pending Pinstripes gets more specific, looking at Hughes' fantastic fastball.

On the same day that Matt from TYU suggested another way to look at how effective pitchers are (runs per 100 pitches), Beyond the Box Score ranked the best pitchers of all time according to Wins Above Replacement per 200 innings pitched. Can you guess the best starter and reliever? Massive hint: both were in the World Series last year.

When you combine all five teams' records, the AL East is 16 games over .500 this year, best in the league by 7 games. Sean Forman at the Bats Blog looks at how the balance of power has shifted to different divisions in recent years.

Mike Ashmore, who does an excellent job of covering the Trenton Thunder, wrote an excellent piece about Alan Horne beginning to recover from the surgery that sought to repair an 80% tear in his rotator cuff. He's receiving Platelet-Rich Plasma treatments and hopes that they will help him heal more fully. Horne is 27 and no longer a prospect, but there are plenty of guys who don't make their Major League debut until they are in their late 20's or 30's and can still have good careers.

When they weren't totally nicking our hooks, Bronx Banter had two excellent interviews this week - one with Dayn Perry and one with Josh Wilker - about their upcoming books.

What do Jonah Keri and Marlo Stanfield have in common? Their names both ring out in the streets. Except I don't think Jonah had to hand out money for it to happen.

The 193 acre farm that contains the Field of Dreams is up for sale. Here are the particulars of the property.

The Sports Hernia comes up with a worthy sequel to my favorite SH post ever.

Craig Calcaterra doesn't use too many tags, but when he does, they are downright awesome.

I'm with Bengie Molina here and I think it's excellent that athletes can use blogging to defend themselves against other, larger forms of media. This is the first post of Molina's I've read and while he's not quite Morgan Ensberg on the keyboard, he did a great job of making his point and staying on the high road, something that's not easy to do if you feel you've been offended personally.

They ah makin' it hah-dah to pahk you-ah cah around Fenway Pahk. WHAT THE FACK!?1/!

I don't listen to WFAN so I had no idea about former New York Football Giant Brad Bensen's ridiculous radio ads until this post on Deadspin highlighted them.

Can someone tell Will Leitch to cinch up his tie?

Now that his daughters are watching the show religiously, Joe Posnanski breaks out a bunch of obscure facts about Gilligan's Island. The show was obviously way before my time but I used to get up early when I was in grade school and watch the reruns before the bus picked me up. The episodes are all pretty much self-contained and the only thing you have to know going is conveyed to you by the theme song. It's right up there with Scooby Doo and House as the most formulaic television show of all time, but when you're 9 years old that only serves to make it easier to understand and enjoy.

And finally, here is a video of an octopus killing a shark. To be fair, Spiny Dogfish Sharks aren't exactly the kings of the ocean and the Giant Pacific Octopus is rather massive, but it's still pretty crazy to watch. The narrator almost ruins it so I suggest that you mute it and skip to the 1:30 mark.