Picks of the Pen

After a long, drawn out, unanimously approved process, Jim Crane bought the Astros and moved them to the AL West.  There he is above, posed naturally with his wife in a baseball stadium, in which they kind of look like they are levitating off the ground like wizards.

“Those of you who don’t know me, I’m from Missouri.  We’re kind of stubborn in Missouri,” said Jim Crane.  Here are ten highly uninteresting things about him, including a description of his move to Houston.  He used a U-Haul.

Woooo.

Several more interesting links are below, I swear.

Blaine

There has been little debate thus far regarding Major League Baseball’s end of the year awards, but the selection of Clayton Kershaw as the National League Cy Young winner did rub some the wrong way.  Those that disagreed with the BBWAA are for the most part advanced stats supporters.

While Kershaw dominated in the statistics most known and presented to the baseball community, wins, strikeouts and ERA, the deeper numbers seem to favor other top candidates.  Eric Seidman of Fangraphs asks the question, was Kershaw really better than Halladay?

As one of the newest members of the FanSided community, Justin Hunter was thrown directly into the offseason fray after taking over as the editor of Chicken Friars Unfortunately for Justin and the other San Diego Padres fans, their team continues to stump everyone with the moves they make.  Their most recent questionable decision involved the re-signing of veteran outfielder Mark Kotsay.   Justin told us all that once the Kotsay signing sunk in, it started to give him the all-too familiar pains experienced by most veteran Pads fans.

Justin K.

When you’re playing in the AL East, and you aren’t any of the three teams that have won it or the Wildcard in recent years, certain problems become increasingly apparent:  Weak pitching.  Inconsistent hitting.  Players playing out of position and making errors.  But the key is to ignore all those problems and change your uniforms!

Both AL East also-rans have gone old school, with the Orioles reintroducing the cartoon bird to the repertoire, and the Blue Jays going back to whatever words are used to describe what they looked like when they won both those World Series.  As a Phillies fan, I would say a word like “grotesque” or “traumatizing” is appropriate.

Another cataclysm this week involved the aforementioned Astros being moved to the American League, where Nate Gilmore of Puckett’s Pond believes they will begin a ferocious rivalry with the Twins for some reason.  As a fan of teams hating each other, I have to hope he’s right.

Joe

As always, FanGraphs has a must-read article about something having to do with heavy advanced statistics. This post by the great Dave Cameron compares John Danks to Edwin Jackson. Cameron shows us that both of them have similar numbers in each of the major advanced statistics for the past three seasons, and they both have the same FIP- of 92. It’s definitely an interesting read for a White Sox fan, or somebody whose team is actively discussing a trade for Danks.

Rum Bunter has a post by Tom Smith about the Pirates reasoning for liking Ramon Santiago more than Ronny Cedeno. It is a very lengthy and humorous piece that every Pirates fan will surely enjoy.

Justin H.

We get so caught up in the good and the bad of Major Leaguers, it’s easy to forget the countless Minor Leaguers who never make it big. A fascinating story of a life-long Minor Leaguer who was never give.

An interesting take on expanded play-offs. While, much of the baseball community seems overwhelmingly in favor of a one-game play-off between the Wild Card teams, this is a fresh take from the other side and it has the research to back it up.