Todd Helton had an off-year in 2006, hitting half the homers that he hit (please forgive the alliteration) 2 or 3 years ago. Even at that, he is still a good hitter and a fine fielder. He is now 32, and at a career crossroads.

The season is done, and so for the long, cold winter you'll only be seeing a new photograph once a week.  It's not because I don't love you -- I sure do -- but because I don't have enough material to put up something daily all winter.  Plus, you know, I need to spend some time with my family.

Today we're featuring Kelly Shoppach, who did something in the batter's box that surprised me:

I'll admit that I was rooting for the Tigers, but there are not really any sour grapes involved here -- I found the World Series between Detroit and St. Louis to be downright boring.

What do they say about desperate times?  That they call for desperate measures or something like that.  So here's Tigers hitting coach Don Slaught, in the hopes that the Photo of the Day Mojo will then spread to all of those hitters that he coaches.

Yeah, I'm rootin' for the Tigers.

...not coffee, but left-field choice for the Tigers in Game 4 against Jeff Suppan.  So suggests Nate Silver.  According to the plan, a struggling Curtis Granderson would sit and Craig Monroe would move to centerfield.  For the second time this season, you get to step into Jim Leyland's shoes.  Which way would you go?

I promised to look at Alfonso Soriano's career next, but after sober second thought, it seemed to me that his mark will be made as a power-hitting #3 hitter rather than as a leadoff hitter. We really need another year or two to see how he does at it, before examining his Hall chances.

So, instead, I thought that I would take a look back at my Hall Watch series of 2 years ago to see how the players are doing. We will start with the catchers- Ivan Rodriguez, Mike Piazza, Jorge Posada, and Javy Lopez.

So yesterday's photo-mojo experiment failed badly when the game was rained out.  Will Alexis Gomez fare better in his Photo of the Day debut?

Here's an article by intrepid correspondent Callum Hughson. Imagine how much you'd like it if I had any idea how to format these things.

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During a random trip to my local library I came across a recent baseball book by Toronto Sun columnist Bob Elliott, titled The Northern Game. I checked it out and gave it a read. The main point of interest for me was the appendix. Here, Elliott asked Canadian baseball experts from all over the nation for lists of the greatest provincial and national baseball players of all-time. Taking the honours at first base was a late 1800s ballplayer named Bill Phillips. Now I can’t tell you all that much about Phillips, other than he was born in Saint John, New Brunswick, that he began his career at 22 and that he played during some of the early tumultuous years of professional baseball. Like most modern Canadian baseball fans would, I scanned my brain to come up with another choice. The most logical was Justin Morneau. As we all know, Justin has had a very short major league career. But after sifting through the data, I came to the conclusion that even if Morneau retired today, he should still be considered the number one Canadian first baseman of all-time. Here’s how I came to that conclusion.

Ivan Rodriguez is mired in a pretty ugly slump at exactly the wrong time for the Detroit Tigers -- can the magical mojo of the Photo of the Day help him out?

Tonight will be the truest test of the POTD effect.  Here's a photograph of Pudge rounding third after hitting a home run against Toronto:

There will be no labour dispute this time around as the owners and players agreed to a 5 year deal.  The deal essentially continues the status quo, with a few minor changes. Elements of the deal include:

1.   no contraction during the life of the deal,
2.   thresholds for the competitive balance tax were raised significantly,
3.   there will be compensation for clubs that fail to sign a first or second round pick, and
4.   free agent compensation was reduced in a number of ways- no type C free agents; the compensation for type B free agents is changed to a sandwich pick only, and fewer type A and type B free agents by tightening the performance criteria.

That one day that I was able to photograph the Detroit Tigers at Rogers Centre was probably the most perfect day in terms of light for dramatic pictures of batters standing at the plate that I could possibly imagine. For pitchers, well, that was some ugly light.  But as Omar Infante demonstrates below, it was very flattering for the hitters:

Today Baseball America released the most up-to-date list of minor league free agents that I've found on the web. It's complete with some of our favourite names of the past few years, including Frank Menechino (??), Tom Wilson, Alberto Castillo, Gookie Dawkins, one of the Bobby Joneses, Tony Torcato, C.J. Nitkowski and Mac Suzuki.

Back in June, I went wandering through the history of all 30 active franchises. I was interested in each team's all-time record - were they winners overall or were they losers? What was each team's highest mark above .500, what was the lowest? If they have a losing record, when did they fall below .500? Stuff like that.

Ichiro! is an icon. This makes it hard to look at him objectively. But, try we will. 2006 was an interesting year for Ichiro. His batting average and isolated power were down, and his strikeout and pop-up rates were up. On the other hand, he was hitting more balls in the air, and stole 45 bases in 47 attempts. Was this the first year of a decline or a transition year on the way to Ichiro developing more power? He certainly has the strength to do it, and I would not bet against him. We shall see.

Another day, another Tiger.  Who wants to place a bet on how many will make Photo of the Day before the series ends?

Today we feature Brandon Inge: