TuesdoLinks: - 17 Days to go!

As Josh posted yesterday, alerted by BrownLunchSack, the Angels posted their 2016 promotional calendar. Pretty much the same Soccer Mom set up that they have been doing for the past decade. Shamefully weak, and joyless. It's the bane of my Halo love, and it goes on forever. I'm sure there are many of you looking forward to snatching up your own not-quite-usable cooler bag and I'm happy for all 5 of you. For me, going over this yet again will just be an echo. So, instead, have some broken record links:

______________________________

Everywhere In Baseball

Minor League Boners: This is why we all need to worship at the alter of Minor League Baseball. An official Netflix & Chill night with the Binghamton Mets on April 12th. You are cordially invited. I wonder if you choose to not bring your significant other, will one be provided? (For the less informed, some background.)..........

Scott Bare Ass: Midwifery: Boras has been watching too much television lately. Somehow he now equates sitting at a desk chatting on the phone, running his Excel spreadsheets, and driving all his employees crazy, to the medical mastery that is the miracle of delivering living human beings into the world............

Overkill: Ok, the only way we are going to silence the mega-over-the-top nonsense coming out of Missouri, where they apparently have just invented winning a World Series, is to beat the lucky breaks back out of them. We really do need to return them to their normal state where skipper Ned Yost's idiocy runs them out of contention, and Dayton Moore is bumbling through his roster, and they don't have any more Nori Aoki miracle plays..............

Underkill: On the other hand, let's give the Royals' ownership some credit. As a small-market team, they spend their revenue-sharing income on building the franchise and not (like some teams we know) use that income to build the owner's new Montana ranch...........

Fathead: A lot of folks are making hay out of the notion that Yasiel Puig is down to 7% body fat. Correct me here if I am wrong, but when was the problem with Puig his athleticism? Unless all that fat he dropped was from between his ears, he's still Puig. It's not like he is going to get paid to outrun a T-Rex or anything..........

Slip-Sliding Away: In case you forgot, there is still a small matter of MLB working on a rules change concerning legal slides. Chase Utley, the dude who inspired this discussion during the NLDS last season, is of the opinion that should they change the rule, everybody should follow it. That seems to be a reasonable opinion, however novel coming from Utley...........

Exercising: The Cincinnati Reds were trying to do a dump and major rebuild this offseason but failed to get their plan completed, mostly because they couldn't move their second baseman, Brandon Phillips. Now we learn why. Phillips didn't want to go. he rejected two trade offers as it was, forcing the Reds to get re-excited about having Brandon Phillips be their second baseman. Hell yeah!  Pay no attention to that shiny Jose Peraza behind the curtain. (That is going to be a rather odd relationship between Phillips and the Reds' front office.)............

Kole Mining: Doing a survey of MLB right fielders, Kole Calhoun reasonably comes up in the Top 15. He had a fine season last year, after all. What is interesting (to me, at least), is how far Ryan Braun has fallen. Where Calhoun comes up 13th, Braun - the National League MVP as recently as 2011 - trails Calhoun at 14th...........

Lost in Fantasy: I dunno. Maybe it's just too late in the night. But I cannot wrap my head around whatever it is that these guys are working at in this team construction simulation. I got as far as thinking they were doing some kind of Christmas gift exchange and gave up. But the summary of the results are fascinating, whatever they heck they mean..............

Stone Cold: Bill Stoneman was not a man to make the Big Splash, focusing more on building through the draft rather than through the market. Stoneman gives a retrospect on his twin turns at the GM chair, and his most impactful decision was to trade away Jim Edmonds for Adam Kennedy/Kent Bottenfield. That one worked out pretty well for both sides, but Tim Salmon was quoted back in 200 with something prophetic: "the trade looks pretty good so far. … But if Jim wins the National League MVP Award, Bill will have to live with that one."  In fact, Edmonds received MVP votes in 5 different seasons while in St. Louis, coming in 4th, 17th, 27th, 5th and 26th. And, of course, he just made the HoF ballot and was a legit contender to stick around for more than one vote (he didn't). So, yeah, Stoneman does live with that one, but he probably lives pretty comfortably with it..............