In a freakishly bizarre move, the Florida Marlins have signed Ivan "Pudge" Rodriguez to a one-year, $10 million dollar contract.

As noted on an earlier thread and as book devotees already know, the 2003 Baseball Prospectus features Blue Jays DH Josh Phelps on the cover. This is quite an honour -- unlike fantasy magazines and mainstream baseball preview editions, which choose the cover subject most likely to attract newsstand attention (e.g., Sammy Sosa graces the Sporting News fantasy issue cover) -- BP has traditionally chosen young sabrmetric heroes, players who deliver verifiable offensive value to their teams. Whether this is good for the players themselves might be a different story.

I'm passing along an excellent suggestion here. Matthew Elmslie, columnist for the Blue Jay Way site and regular BB visitor, has sent an e-mail to Nelson Millman, manager of The FAN 590, Toronto's sports radio station. Here's an excerpt:

Baseball Prospectus, the organization that comes out with the annual book of the same name and runs a popular baseball analysis website, is starting a radio show in February. I've been a fan of Baseball Prospectus for a while and I'd like to be able to hear their show on the FAN. Blue Jays advisor Keith Law is a former writer for Prospectus, and their ideas are very relevant to what's going on these days with the Blue Jays.

For more information about this radio show, including how to get in touch with them, you can e-mail wcarroll@baseballprospectus.com or call 800 TALK 2 90 and ask for details from their affiliate relations manager. I got this information at http://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/20030117radio.shtml.

I'm looking forward to listening to another season of baseball on the FAN.

I've met Mr. Millman; he's a fellow baseball coach and a great guy, but he won't be persuaded by one letter to make a programming decision. If you want BP Radio on the air in Toronto, add your voice to Matthew's and mine.

From their own blurb on ESPN: "The Ultimate Standings is the first attempt ever to measure which teams do right by their fans and which put the hurt on their loyal followers." A poll of 34,000 fans led to this unscientific, but fascinating study that rates the Blue Jays as 12th best among MLB teams, according to the following criteria:

BNG (Bang for the Buck): Revenues directly from fans divided by wins in the past three years
FRL (Fan Relations): Ease of access to players, coaches & management
OWN (Ownership): Honesty; loyalty to players and city
AFF (Affordability): Price of tickets, parking and concessions
STD (Stadium Experience): Friendliness of environment; quality of game-day promotions
PLA (Players): Effort on the field; likability off it
CCH (Coach/Manager): Strong on-field leadership
CHA (Championships): Titles already won or expected -- soon

Assigning weights to each category to calculate the final ranking was Dr. I. M. Arbitrary. Actually, they let the fans who responded decide, so the formula is = (BNG x .192) + (FRL x .182) + (OWN x .159) + (AFF x .125) + (STD x .125) + (PLA x .120) + (CCH x .053) + (CHA x .044)

If I ever had my own space in a "real" publication, it might be called "$PORT$" because it's so hard to ignore the financial aspects of our fun and games. Miami Herald columnist Dan Le Batard calls Alex Rodriguez an "undeserving symbol of greed" in his latest commentary. It's an interesting piece, asking among other things, "...doesn't it matter that Rodríguez not only earns his salary, unlike so many others stealing bloated paychecks, but also gives a lot of it away?"

If you're looking for a Blue Jays connection, start at 1B. Carlos Delgado didn't extort the contract he signed, it was offered to him. Unlike the other expensive players who are no longer around because they could be easily replaced, he's actually produced. Sure, he's getting 33% (more or less) of the team payroll, and therefore "isn't worth it." Sure, we tend to be even more impatient with his inconsistent defensive play and too-frequent baserunning blunders, because he makes more in a day than we do in a year. But like A-Rod, he's very generous in helping the less fortunate, and his massive salary isn't his fault. (Send your complaints to Milwaukee, attention "Assistant GM.") I resolve to cut the big fella some slack this year, and hope that when he is a free agent after 2004, he'll consider taking what is then fair value to stick around for the dynasty.

The newest Jay, John-Ford Griffin, was interviewed by Spencer Fordin on MLB's official site.

Speaking of budding dynasties, or at least columns about them, my latest A’s garbage is up. With all due respect to the up-and-coming Blue Jays, they can’t match the A’s dynamite 1-2-3 punch at the top of the rotation, so I give J.P.’s former boys the slight edge in the next few years. Soon after I finished gibber-gabbering, I also checked out, once again, Gary Huckaby’s Hot Stove Heater for the Athletics, and I took another look at his projected batting order.

2B Mark Ellis
1B Scott Hatteberg
SS Miguel Tejada
DH Erubiel Durazo
RF Jermaine Dye
3B Eric Chavez
LF Terrence Long
CF Chris Singleton
C Mark Johnson/Ramon Hernandez

Speaking of budding dynasties, or at least columns about them, my latest A’s garbage is up. With all due respect to the up-and-coming Blue Jays, they can’t match the A’s dynamite 1-2-3 punch at the top of the rotation, so I give J.P.’s former boys the slight edge in the next few years. Soon after I finished gibber-gabbering, I also checked out, once again, Gary Huckaby’s Hot Stove Heater for the Athletics, and I took another look at his projected batting order.

2B Mark Ellis
1B Scott Hatteberg
SS Miguel Tejada
DH Erubiel Durazo
RF Jermaine Dye
3B Eric Chavez
LF Terrence Long
CF Chris Singleton
C Mark Johnson/Ramon Hernandez

Today was supposed to be a BB site maintenance day for me, adding links and working on the Lineup (authors) page, but now a friend is in need of tech support, and his fridge is well stocked with beer. So I'm tossing out a couple of items, and if there's no breaking news and nobody posts any manifestos, you're invited to make this a catch-all discussion.

As I've mentioned before, there's nothing wrong with Richard Griffin when he isn't blinded by his anti-Blue Jays fury. His recent basketball work is entertaining -- I agree that Rafer Alston's a breath of fresh air in a stinky season -- and this praise of Bud Selig, though contrary to my opinion, is certainly not offensive. However, instead of twisting or ignoring facts, as he usually does in an assault on J.P. & Co., he plucks misinformation out of thin air:

If Dusty (Baker, managing the NL in the 2003 ASG) wanted to annoy his former team, he could bring in, say, Mike Timlin to close out the win in the ninth.

Sure he could, Rich. If Timlin was an all-star (not bloody likely) or if he wasn't an AL pitcher.

Here's my ESPN column, an early look at possible 2003 Jays draft day busts and bargoons. The fantasy correspondents there are volunteers, not obliged to start posting until spring training, but some of us are hard to shut up. I notice that John Gizzi's checked in on the A's, but Mick Doherty hasn't yet on the Yankees. Can't blame him; with an OF of Godzilla-Rondell-Bernie-Raul (the Boy of Summer sez White will play left-center field) and Juan Rivera as the rover, plus a 7-man rotation, it's hard to give fantasy advice. MED and JMG nominated an old Coach as 2002 Rookie of the Year and MVP among our peers, prompting their invitations here.

There are many fine correspondents; Scott Lucas is a regular visitor to this site, who's posted his view from Texas on Valdes and Thomson. Ed Matz (Mariners) also writes for ESPN: the Magazine, Thor Kolnes (Marlins) provides offbeat stuff and Giz-baiting, and Brad Doolittle handles the unenviable Royals beat gracefully. There will probably be some "help wanted" signs attached to a few teams (that's how I got the gig) and if you convince the staff you are qualified, there are precedents -- Mick sets lots of those -- for covering a team in another city.

Some of you may think fantasy baseball is a childish waste of time, and to you, I respectfully stick out my tongue and say, "so?"

The middle parts of trilogies can be great hits or uncomfortable misses, so it's with the usual amount of trepidation that I present the second of my three-part look at the Blue Jays' farm system. Part One, posted back in December, reviewed the prospects (such as they were) at AAA Syracuse, while Part Three, due around late February, will look at the Blue Jays’ leading A-Ball prospects (I hope to have it completed before spring training games start March 1).

As the BB hit counter clicks relentlessly toward 10,000, I'm scared -- this HTML-impaired geezer must modify the digits.com code and the mysterious Greymatter templates. If the site acts a bit strange, try to follow this advice, which I saw on TV late one night and adopted as a personal philosophy:

Trouble is temporary. Please stand by.

Of course, I am thrilled at the rapid growth of this forum, and at making so many great new baseball friends. At this rate, we'll need a sixth digit in the counter sometime during the 2004 season! We may also experience a change of address soon, as in our own domain and server. Stay tuned...

You have probably noticed the boring welcome message is gone, replaced by an Authors list in the sidebar. The next step is to create a new Lineup page, so if my co-bloggers would e-mail whatever personal information they want to share, we'll get that going, and add a "search by author" function to the site. On the other hand, it might be more interesting if Mick wrote John's bio, and vice versa.

A sharp-eyed contributor at FanHome noticed that there's some uniform-number switching going on with the Blue Jays. The official site's roster indicates the following changes:

Alexis Rios takes #15 from Tom Wilson, who adopts #9
Mike Bordick takes #16 from DeWayne Wise, who adopts #1
Jason Dubois takes #54 from Jayson Werth, who adopts #13

Visitor admission to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame? Five dollars.

A "baseball bat chair" from the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame Memorabilia online store? Two hundred twenty-nine dollars.

Inducting Pete Rose, who hit .259 in 95 games for the 78-83 1984 Montreal Expos to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame as an obvious PR grab?

Shameless.

Roy Halladay and Cliff Politte have both signed one-year deals.

Once again, the Jays have done the right thing by avoiding arbitration and letting players get on with more baseball-oriented concerns. Halladay will earn $3.825 million and Politte $845,000. Kent's prediction for Politte was almost right on the head - $55,000 off.

This leaves Stewart and Escobar as the outstanding arb-eligibles. These might not settle as easily, but there's hope yet.