HumpLinks: 2 days to go!

Do you want to know just how badly it is that we need new baseball in our lives again? Here's how. Just a Bit Outside still has a cover page article that has been staring at me for nearly 4 months, talking about last year's World Series in the present tense. Gawd, give the Internet some fresh stuff to celebrate, please.

Here's to hoping that, starting next week, we have some much-easier-to-ferret-out Links:

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Everywhere In Baseball

Picking at PECOTA: As we all know by now, the various PECOTA projections are out. Fans of the Royals are probably the most bent out of shape over this. And the slide rule set is prepared for the backlash. I am not going to write a new essay because I have dug into this before. But in the world of statistical analysis, when reporting results, it is generally considered polite to also provide one's margin for error. For PECOTA, that's +-8. That's enough to make PECOTA rather silly. Really, just click over to my old Weekend Recap article and scroll down to One Big Idea.............By the way, Jose Bautista doesn't care much for PECOTA, either..............

Gettin' Griched: Bobby Grich knows that he was great, certainly by modern standards. ("Bottom line, Grich’s projected OPS had he played for the Tigers or Red Sox is better than every Hall of Fame second baseman except for Rogers Hornsby.") He also knows that the people who make decisions about Hall of Fame induction are not modern. Grich feels that his chances of getting in the Hall are not good, "at all". But the good news is that the conversation over Grich being overlooked has not surrendered to time...........

Hamboner: Color me surprised. Josh Hamilton is hard at work at his comeback from his comeback from his comeback, and it ain't working out well already. The shell of himself has eggshells for knees and is unable to make it through even one full workout. So, well, it continues to play out that Josh was going to take Arte's money to not do much of anything regardless of what uniform he wears..............

Time Out: Joel Sherman of the NY Post has come to the conclusion that baseball needs fewer time outs. So he wants to legislate them. I say Joel Sherman needs to pick a new sport to fret about. Like, maybe, Street Fighter V..........

Selfies: The way I figure it, if you are going to use your cell phone to record your batting sessions, and you are going to take out said cellphone with  batted ball, and you want to post this video on social media to become famous, maybe you should do it via line drive and not a weak ground out to second base.............

R.I.P: A freshman Community College baseball player died in the recent eastern deep freeze when he left a party and failed to make it home, freezing to death. For some reason, he had detoured over to the baseball fields while temperatures were 20 below.............

Flipping Out: Uh, maybe it's me but I think that this bat flip, being celebrated so much yesterday, is the kind of thing that will eventually motivate Baseball to invent a new rule against it. That kind of thing can't be healthy..........

Fans of Graphs: The Washington Post launches the baseball season by recognizing the impact that FanGraphs has had on the sport, from fans to front offices. Welcome aboard, Mr. Old Media Still Stuck in the Memory of The 70's Heydey............

Happy Hunting Grounds: Where did MLB teams get the players who comprise the current Top 40? Pretty much from everywhere, except international signings. I expect that last part to change in the coming years since international signings make up a significant percentage of the Top 100 Prospects............

Music of the Blues: The Dodgers are bucking the trend in live music and hoping for a resurgence in stadium rock. They are probably also hoping for a return of big hair..............

Hack Attack: Delmon Young, in deep trouble for choking and threatening to kill his girlfriend, was pwned on Facebook by some other girlfriend, someone apparently upset that it was not she who was assaulted. So she assaulted Young's Facebook page. Now one would wonder why this girl is not thrilled that she dodged the bullet that is Delmon Young, but I wonder why it is that Delmon Young shares his Facebook password with the girl he chooses NOT to date............

Winter Fail: The list of the worst counts down the bottom 10 franchises who made the least of the offseason re-tooling cycle and, oddly enough, that countdown does not meander through Anaheim. Why do I point you to this? Because it allows you to realize that things could be a lot worse. A lot...........

Sports Biz: Now you're talkin'. FanDuel and DraftKings have been getting their ass kicked in courts and in government chambers all over the place. And they have been taking it in the shorts in the boardrooms of their business partners as a result. it was looking quite dour for both. But finally - FINALLY! - the two have teamed up for a proven winning strategy for unbridled profitability: hire a shitload of lobbyists and start buying off politicians...........

OT: Birds have doing this shit for millions of years. One would think that by now they would have mastered the art of time shares...........(h/t thebiglead)

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