"The Thing With Feathers" by Craig Burley

In about 2009, the tone of all Pirates previews will have changed. By that time, the tone will either have become noticeably more respectful or will have blown over the fine line between failure and utter despair. The Pirates have not made the playoffs or finished with a .500 record since Barry Bonds played for them.

According to the incomparably accurate Newberg Report, the Los Angeles Dodgers have signed RHP Spike Lundberg to a minor league contract.

You may remember Lundberg from his generous Ask Spike interview session here on Batter's Box, or even the astoundingly cleverly-named followup, Ask Spike II.

Regardless, we look forward to the Jays facing Spike when he starts Game 1 of the 2006 World Series. He's off to be with the (city of) angels now ...

The Red Sox traded a bit of their surplus starting pitching sending Bronson Arroyo to the Reds for OF Wily Mo Pena.

A little last minute, but since Robert Dudek and myself are headed down to Philthy McNasty's to watch the World Baseball Classic on Monday night, we've decided to invite y'all out along with us. The game starts at 9:00.

I'm going to give them a call early-ish Monday afternoon, so if you're thinking of coming either e-mail me at aaron@aaronreynolds.ca or post here in this thread so that I can get some kind of idea of how many people will be there.

Tiger, Tiger, burning bright...

I'm sorry, I'm tired. I can't do this anymore.

Nobody volunteered to write about the Phillies this year, so once again we shall have a group effort.

The middle of spring training is here and the Jays finally have all of their players in camp. Vernon Wells is back from the WBC and in the lineup, and Gustavo Chacin is scheduled to pitch today.

At this time last year, I warned you all, in somewhat apocalyptic terms, that the 2005 Diamondbacks were going to be a truly wretched and awful team.

And indeed they were. Second place? Yeah, yeah. Don't be fooled. Like a dead skunk in the middle of the road, they stunk to high heaven.

Now that Doc has signed an extension the next player in line is Vernon Wells.

Like Toronto, Texas had an eventful offseason that renewed the hope of its fans. New GM Jon Daniels made two bold trades and spent a healthy portion of his boss’s treasure to upgrade the team. Did Texas improve enough to overtake both Los Angeles and Oakland and reach the postseason for the first time since 1999?

This morning's buzz turned out to be true: in a 1:00 press conference today, the Toronto Blue Jays announced that Roy Halladay has signed a 3 year, $40 million dollar contract extension, locking him up as a Jay until 2010.

Now, A.J. Burnett's wife gets free limo rides, and Troy Glaus's wife gets an operating budget for her ranch as part of their spouses' contracts --

What perks will Mrs. Halladay be receiving? Speculate away!

Oh yeah, and let's talk about what this means to the future of the team and stuff like that, too. I suppose that's also important.

Yesterday was the first day for minor league spring training games. The minor league regular season is just three weeks or, to be precise, 21 days away. Yesterday the Jays fortified the minor league ranks by returning eight players to minor league camp. To give us our minor league fix I have put together a description of the one thing, and only one thing, that each of the Blue Jays top 30 prospects needs to do in 2006 to move up the prospect charts.

Those folks on the other side of Chicago seem to have all the fun.

Today the Boston Red Sox returned Jamie Vermilyea to the Toronto Blue Jays. The Red Sox selected him in the Rule V draft, but he was competed for a job in a deep bullpen. Furthermore, with the Red Sox being a contender he needed to heavily impress them to make the team. He only had one appearance in Spring Training, where he didn't allow a run over two innings, but evidently he didn't show them enough in practice to make the team.

Like many things in life, this started off as one idea, and ended up somewhere else entirely.