Friday Linkstravaganza

They are making Negro Leagues stamps? Awesome.

Without getting into subjective things like game calling and pitch framing, Mike from River Ave. Blue attempted to quantify the defensive contributions of Major League catchers, with emphasis of course on Jorge Posada and Francisco Cervelli. Using stolen bases, caught stealing, wild pitches and passed balls, Mike created cRSAA/180 (Catcher's Runs Saved Above Average per 180 innings). A key point: it's a good thing Cervelli is hitting, because he's not the defensive whiz he was in the minors.

According to a survey conducted among MLB players by Sports Illustrated, Joba Chamberlain is the most overrated player in the league and by more than double the next closest guy (A-Rod, obviously). Translation: guys who play for other clubs really don't like him and resent the attention he got when he first broke into the league. Does he get more recognition than he deserves because of his unique name and what he did in 2007? Absolutely. Do people who look at baseball objectively overvalue what he does? I don't think so.

Sparked by a conversation on Google Reader about a paragraph on Rob Neyer's blog by two of the guys from IIATMS, Moshe Mandel from TYU talked a little bit about what makes a team "championship-caliber". I agree with Moshe: we don't need to get ahead of ourselves, but if the Yankees don't deserve that distinction right now, then no team does.

Speaking of those gents from IIATMS, they, along with a few others, wrote a trade deadline primer which you can purchase here for $10. It's packed with information about where the Yankees stand and who they might be looking to fill some of the gaps in their roster with.

According to TiqIQ, who has a really cool partnership with River Ave. Blues, the secondary market prices were climbing for Friday night's game even before it was announced that the Yankees would be honoring George Steinbrenner and Bob Sheppard. The fact that is the first home game since the 4th of July on a Friday night certainly is helping raise those prices.

Is it just me, or does The Boss deserve a better commemorative patch than this. Bob Sheppard's, on the other hand, is pretty sharp.

Red Sox fans payed tribute to George Steinbrenner and Bob Sheppard and were respectful about it. Seriously.

Hey look, the All-Star Game got the lowest ratings of all time. It might have been the interminable pregame ceremonies or the 8:50PM ET start, but I'd like to think that, without a hook like the last year of Yankee Stadium or something, mostly because of the infinite pitching changes and cameos by position players the ASG really just sucks. This isn't Little League, not everyone has to appear in the damn game.

You probably noticed that the radar gun was lighting up on Tuesday night. The appropriately-named Mike Fast at The Hardball Times looks into whether or not the readings were accurate.

In response to an email from a Twitter follower, Jonah Keri put together "a few" (more like a dozen) thoughts on some of the deeper (social, racial) implications of the Yunel Escobar for Alex Gonzalez trade.

Minor league maven John Sickels projected Major League character Rick "Wild Thing" Vaughn's career statistics. Unsurprisingly, his propensity for free passes kept him from being truly dominant.

Ben Nicholson-Smith from MLBTR had an excellent profile of Daniel Nava, who signed with the Red Sox for a whopping $1 back in 2008 and is producing for the Big Leauge club now.

Not golf-related, but Wright Thompson has a typically great feature piece up at ESPN.com about the history of St. Andrews. A nice companion piece to some early morning British Open viewing, I say.

Perhaps you heard about the suicide bombings that took place in Kampala, Uganda that targeted a viewing of the World Cup final at a rugby club. Well, my sister is actually in Kampala right now. She was nowhere near the bombings and is just fine, but if you'd like to read her reaction to the attacks, here it is.

My buddy Frank has tickets to the Lacrosse World Championships, which had to be reshuffled because English officials initially wouldn't accept the hand-written passports presented by the Iroquois Nation's team.

It's not at all sports-related, but here is a great story about the guy did an incredible amount of research before he appeared on Price is Right and whose appearance culminated with him guessing the exact price of the Showcase Showdown. But was it just preparation and luck? The producers of the show think the fix was in.

Friday Morning Link Party

This has been by far the slowest week of the offseason around these parts with a slow drip of news and a heavy dose of manual labor keeping me away from my computer. Things will get better soon as we will be dusting off our Countdown to Spring Training via uniform number starting tomorrow morning and running every day through February 16th. The Yanks hurlers and backstops report on the 17th, giving us 26 days and counting until Spring Training begins.

For now, here are some links to propel you towards the weekend.

Our buddy Jason lays out an exhaustive rubric you can use to determine whether you are "new school" or "old school" in your tastes as a baseball fan. I'm somewhere in the middle because I have the most respect for the great players who aren't demonstrative but understand that amount of money that guys are making has changed a lot of aspects of the game.

Javier Vazquez told a Spanish language newspaper in his native Puerto Rico that he doesn't know how much longer he wants to play and might be willing to go year to year with his contracts a la Andy Pettitte. Or at least that's what I'm told. Me Espanol es muy mal. And before you go off the deep end like this guy about it, remember that Pettitte doesn't seem to have lost any of his "desire" over the past couple of years.

Minor league guru John Sickels has some very nice things to say about Jesus Montero. He released them in the hopes that they might get you to buy his book but that doesn't make them any less true. I hope.

The Royals signed Rick Ankiel for $3.25M with a $6M mutual option for next year. Stop it. It's not funny. Okay, it's pretty funny.

If you were wondering why Jason Bay didn't re-sign with the Red Sox, here's why.

Bruce Markusen from the Hardball Times (and Bronx Banter) lists off some of today's best baseball nicknames and then goes back in history position but position to find the all-time greats.

Patrick Sullivan at Baseball Analysts demonstrates to Murray Chass how someone's opinion can matter even if they don't have a Hall of Fame vote.

Beyond the Box Score is continuing their effort to honor the best in statistically-slanted baseball writing with the BtB Sabermetric Awards. There are seven categories to vote on which are sure to contain excellent pieces of analytical baseball thinking that you were not aware of.

Larry from Wezen-Ball earned himself a radio interview as a result of his widely acclaimed Charlie Brown baseball posts. His plot to take over the world continued yesterday with the official release of his iPhone/Android app.

In case you were wondering, Hideki Irabu still retired. For real this time.

And finally a bit of fun non-baseball reading. Joe Posnanski picks apart a bunch of infomercials for your entertainment.

We'll be back with more before the day is done.