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Tuesday Halolinks: Kole Calhoun was a surprise?

I guess if you're a fan of some other team.

By Jim Gardner
Kelvin Kuo-USA TODAY Sports

Before you digest your turkey later this week, digest some links from this turkey...

Halolinks!

  • Nice write-up about one of my favorite Angels: Kole Calhoun: The Surprise That Was Right In Front of Us - FOX Sports, "There are reasons, or maybe we could say excuses, for Calhoun's dismissal as a prospect. He never made a top 100 Baseball America list, he never made that organization's top 10 prospects on the Angels, and there wasn't much buzz about him coming up. He's not tall -- at 5-10 -- and his Baseball America write-up said his tools were "uninspiring."
  • Ashtray money for some people: San Francisco Giants get record $388K postseason share - ESPN, "Full shares were worth $125,288 for the Baltimore Orioles, $115,481 for St. Louis, $31,544 for Detroit, $31,543 for the Los Angeles Dodgers, $29,845 for the Angels, $29,418 for the Washington Nationals, $16,556 for the Pittsburgh Pirates and $15,266 for the Oakland Athletics."
  • I agree with Bonds, he'll eventually get his deserved place in the hall: Patient Bonds believes he'll eventually reach Hall - MLB.com, "I deserve to be there," Bonds said. "Clemens deserves to be there. The guys that are supposed to be there are supposed to be there. Period. I don't even know how to say it. We are Hall of Famers. Why are we having these conversations about it? Why are we talking about a baseball era that has come and gone? Era, era, era. Do the best players in the game deserve to be in the Hall of Fame? Yes. Everything that everyone has accomplished in baseball is in that [record] book. Correct? So if that's correct, then we need to be in there. End of story."
  • Ugh. The Mailbox Money Men Power Rankings – The Hardball Times, "The Starting Pitchers’ Early Retirement Club Echelon 17. Ricky Romero – $8.35M from Toronto Blue Jays – 2015-2016 16. Ubaldo Jimenez – $9M from Baltimore Orioles – Dates Unknown 15. Bronson Arroyo – $9.541 from Cincinnati Reds – 2015-2021 T13. Joe Blanton – $10M from Los Angeles Angels – 2015 Although Romero is still with the Blue Jays organization, spotrac classifies the entirety of his salary as dead money since he isn’t currently part of the major league roster. While Jimenez has prudently deferred a portion of his salary with the Orioles for later, Arroyo appears to be the real master of the Mailbox Money game. Arroyo already has received $5.452 million in Mailbox Money from the Reds, and his current contract with the Diamondbacks includes a $4.5 million buyout for 2016, which looks like an increasingly likely proposition. The Angels’ deal with Blanton makes the Marlins’ deal with Bell look like a bargain: After receiving $7.5 million in Mailbox Money this past season, Blanton is getting a raise!"
  • What I find interesting is, there was someone out there with the information who wanted to tell it.  Why?  And why these guys?  Meet the teenagers who landed a shocking MLB scoop - New York Post, "Thirteen-year-old Devan Fink, a middle schooler from Northern Virginia, was the first to report the A’s were close to signing free agent Billy Butler. Then 18-year-old Robert Murray, a college freshman from Wisconsin and with Fink the co-proprietor of MLBDailyRumors.com, was the first to report the details of Butler’s pact."
  • Here's today's science lesson: The Effects of Pitch Sequencing – The Hardball Times, "In both seasons I investigated, I identified a common band where SwStr% is notably high. I enclosed this band in black lines in the images. There is also a smattering of green cells down the left hand side of the images, showing that consecutive pitches that start out looking quite different but end up crossing home plate in the same location can also be quite effective. However the consistency of the band inside the black lines demonstrates the most reliable source of swings and misses."
  • And here's how you're supposed to feel about that sceince lesson: Sabermetrics can be questioned, but do so correctly - Statliners, "People who choose not to delve into the world I have, and will outright deny anything that has to do with sabermetrics. Most of the time, these people have not done the research necessary to adequately question the metrics or processes used to create them. They just don’t like anything that disagrees with what they have always "known" and assumed about baseball, and if it doesn’t agree with them, it must not be true. And therein lies the disconnect."
  • An interesting story about that catch: How everyone thought I missed the photo of Odell Beckham Jr.'s amazing touchdown catch ... but I didn't - NJ.com, "When the first photos of the catch were published, Twitter erupted. Tweets ridiculed me. Other tweets fired me. I was the guy with the best angle on the shot, they said, but paralyzed by the moment. One of my network television friends sent me a screen shot."

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