Weekend HaloLinks: What Do I Get? Edition

It's the start of a long holiday weekend and, according to this guy, these might be the final words you ever read. And it's not like baseball is doing enough to keep me overwhelmed with interest these days. So we are going with a more customary linkage production today. If you came here looking for the typical Friday barrage of 320 bajillion links, well, I know you don't click on more than 12 of them anyway. So I am choosing to dedicate my laziness to your attention deficit. Besides, RubixQube and HaloVet are home, and I have some pretty cool things going on to suck up my free time.

Therefore, my essay this week is going to be very short and very sweet and very simple: It is worthy of reflection that we are fans of a team where the only player who could possibly have been a better center fielder than Mike Trout throughout all of Major League Baseball in 2012, Peter Bourjos, was trapped on the bench by Mike Scioscia for huge portions of the season. And Jerry Dipoto has just spent this off season rebuilding the roster in a manner that should prevent that from happening in the future. Discuss.

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Over at Fangraphs, Jeff Sullivan is trying to figure out what his Mariners have gotten in Kendrys Morales, and he comes up empty. However, Howard Bender says that Morales is a ripe choice for your 2013 fantasy team.

Meanwhile, Morales himself has declared that he is 100% fit and ready to take over 1B full time. Is this the same Kendrys Morales who customarily appeared in the books with the slowest tater trot in baseball?

One big upside to Dipoto dealing Morales? Neither Peter Bourjos nor Mark Trumbo need lose any further sleep over the threat of having to play for Jeffrey Loria.

Josh Hamilton gave Arte Moreno a SoCal discount?? According to Seattle Mariners G.M. Jack Zduriencik, Hamilton was asking for more money from the M's than he took to sign with the Halos.

The Sporting News sizes up Josh Hamilton, and sees all sorts of parallels with Michael Vick.

This Date In Baseball History: The two best items of note that occurred on this date are 2005, when the Oakland A's announced that they will be tarping over their upper deck and turning their park into the smallest in all of baseball..........and 2007 when the Cincinatti Reds traded Josh Hamilton to the Texas Rangers in exchange for a pair of random human beings named Edinson Volquez and Danny Herrera.

We the douchebags of the United Jerkage of MLB, in order to from a more perfect union, do order and establish the signing of A.J. Pierzynski by the Texas Rangers to a one year contract.

Hat Tip to HBT: MLB AL East uniforms re-imagined as soccer kits. The Toronto Blue Jays version is miles and miles ahead of what we actually use as the US National design.

This might be fun: Jason Stark cites some unnamed "baseball executives" in declaring that two of the least improved teams in all of baseball are right here among us in the AL West.. And both of them are from Texas. The Rangers and the Astros. He also leans on Dan Szymborski (who checks in here at HH every once in a while) to project how well the Angels have improved themselves for 2013 so far. Answer? An uninspiring four wins, from 84 to 88.

Edwin Jackson, $52 million-dollar man. $13 million per year over four years for a guy who averages about 1.1 bWAR per year. At that rate, the Dodgers stole Zack Greinke.

The Anatomical Diagram of Kevin Youkilis. "Beard hair silo". Excellent.

Tim Lincecum is Clark Kent! Durr, uh, isn't that supposed to be the other way around?

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Parting Christmas Link, Guaranteed To Be The Awesomest Thing You Will Learn Today: In the spirit of this season, what with it being the High Holy Days of Santa Claus, let us pay particular attention to the word "high".