HumpLinks: Turkey Day Eve

Let just jump right to it, shall we? Turkey Day Eve Links:

Chat it up about LA prospects, Baseball America. And don't be shy showing some serious love for Jahmai Jones..........

There is the old saw about shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic that I over-use around here. So I will tweak it. All this traffic of stuff such as signing a Nolan Fontana and DFA'ing a Juan Graterol seems more like shuffling of the bunk  beds down in steerage...........

Today's Trade for Mike Trout folly..........

Of course Mike Trout would cap the list of all outfielders. The fun part is that Kole Calhoun comes in at a projected or 2017 #32. Hey, it's subjectivity, and only one guuy, but he has thought about this harder than you have. Look at the list of names ranked just below Kole. Obviously, this is highly slanted to offense. How else to explain how a Kevin Kiermaier falls to #58? Anyway, if Cameron Maybin could crank it back up, the Angels would have one of the most formidable outfields in baseball..........

Let's all celebrate the fact that we finally have our first sightings of "lockout" to bicker about! With the CBA expiring in days, and the replacement Agreement making a rather unexceptional march towards fresh ink, this should have been long overdue. Only that there have not been any public diatribes from either side have we (well, ok, I) been suspicious about how tough either side has wanted to be to take advantage of this rare opportunity to implement substantial improvements to the institution. People are going to start looking very serious now. Oh my. They might even start to actually thinking about these things in earnest.  For you and I, the first thing at stake would be the inability of the Angels to sign any Free Agents after 12/1/2016 and until a new CBA is in place. I know. Crazy talk!............

5 guys in the MLB whose careers are on the verge of being Hall of Fame worthy. Mike Trout already has more bWAR than three of them, and will pass the other two within three years..........

Speaking of HoF, as Josh did last year, here is a link to Jay Jaffe, the guy who invented JAWS, giving us the measure of this year's ballot prospects...........

Yep. It is quite probable that the 2016 playoffs marked a course correction in baseball strategy that will make itself evident throughout baseball. Maybe even before the season starts, if more teams look to carry more one-inning guys in their bullpens..........And if teams use the possible 26th Active Roster slot for this, yes it would mean more game interruptions...........

You click on this article about the LEAST Valuable Players in MLB for 2016, smirking to yourself that this list is definitely going to include too many familiar names. It does not. But only because the list was filtered for those players with enough AB's to rank as "qualified". Since the Halos did a lot of platooning with their vast array on the feeble, this filter locks them out of the party. Ok. Fair enough. But let's use that benchmark and look at that last page anyway. Oh shit, look at that. We see the same Kendrys Morales who just signed with the Blue Jays for 3 years, $33 million. We see the Andrew McCutcheon who was NL MVP jsut a couple of seasons ago, and Top 5 MVP vote getter for 4 years running until 2016. We see free agents Mike Napoli and we see much-discussed Howie Kendrick. We see the Brandon Phillips who wants to be traded to a California team. And right there, at #130 out of 146, we see Albert Pujols..........

The Duffle Bag