MondoLinks: 32 Days until pitchers report!

• Garrrett Richards: Richards and the Angels exchanged arb numbers, and they are $1.4MM apart. Richards' camp came in at $3.8MM, and the Angels submitted $2.4MM. As MLBTraderumors points out, that delta equates to 58% of the team's filing price. That's pretty big. It is very meaningful as things pertain to Richards. The figure assigned by the arbitrator (or something in between should the parties settle before then) becomes the baseline for Richards for future raises. And, as a Super Two, Richards has three more rounds of arb cycles that the Angels will need to content with. Starting out these arb cycles at nearly $4Mm per year will mean that Richards will be fetching a pretty penny before his current contract is up and he would be marketing for real money.

• More Signings: After posting Friday that Hector Santiago, Cesar Ramos and Drew Butera had signed, avoiding arbitration, that Angels followed up on that day with the signings of Fernando Salas and Collin Cowgill.

• Baldoquin: Get yourself some Baldoquin fix here.

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• Max Scherzer: Our long national nightmare is over! Max Scherzer has finally found himself a home. The Nationals dropped the bucket and, although I don't have the final final, word has it that it will be 7 years for $180MM+.  Plus, of course, a 1st round draft pick in June back to Detroit. The Nats lose pick #27, and the Tigers will gain pick #35.  So that is about the correct number of years we were all forecasting all along. A little shy of the $210MM territory, though, unless the final number comes up. maybe with incentives or something. And here I was just thinking we needed a scorecard to track which teams were in, and which were out...............As is being pointed out, this could make the Nats' rotation historically great. But I have to wonder, what do you do with those extra arms when you have a 3-man rotation in the playoffs?

• Rangers: This transaction could hit a little closer to home.  The Rangers are on the verge of trading with the Brewers and receiving Yovani Gallardo. Gallardo would be a fine pickup for the Texas rotation.

• Wrigley Follies: Meanwhile, in Chicago, things are far less, uh, on the ball. To the surprise of absolutely nobody, the bleachers in Wrigley field will NOT be completed in time.  I adore the official Cubs confidence that the bleachers will be ready precisely on May 11. Not a day later, nor a day sooner for that matter.

• Expo-Mania: I am starting to get a little tired about all this ongoing Expos love. If only Canadians cared this much about the Expos when they had them, they might actually still have them.

• Pitch Clocks: Ok, so I am on record as not caring for pitch clocks. Mostly because there are already existing rules that need to be re-enforced first before twiddling ever more within the labyrinth that is the Official Rule Book of Baseball. But this from Jon Lester, that pitch clock subtract from the grand beauty inherent within the game, is hogwash. "There's such a cat-and-mouse game as far as messing up hitters' timing, messing up pitchers' timing. Different things that fans and people that have never played this game don't understand. I feel like if you do add a clock it just takes all the beauty away from the game." I mean, sure, if a pitch clock resulted in baseball fans heckling in unison by counting down with the clock between pitches, that would be ruinous. Even more than the wave. But, dear Jon, people who never played the game don't commit their time and money so they can sit there and stare off into blank inaction while you and some random journeyman batter can indulge one another in private follies of delay during the 5th inning of a Wednesday night game in Phoenix.

• 2014 Blasts: Have some fun. GIFs of the 10 longest homers last season. It all culminates, of course, in Mike Trout's 489 foot monster jam in Kansas City.  489 feet. Four hundred and eighty none feet. That is one regulation football field, AND both end zones AND nearly half another football field.