Thursday, December 15, 2016

Thursday Morning Hot Links

*Jake Kaplan has a pretty remarkable note in his story on roster depth and Hinch's penchant for playing matchups: In two seasons as manager he has never used the same lineup more than four times. Hinch:
As the batting order evolves, as the playing time is sorted out, I'm likely to have an angry guy next to me on the bench which is a good problem to have, maybe I'll have two. I hope all three of them are mad and want to play.

*FanGraphs' Jeff Sullivan has an entertaining article: A Very Stupid Jose Altuve Hypothetical

*Jeff Bagwell is now on 38 of 43 known ballots (88%) for the HOF. Having picked up two votes from returning voters over 2016 (the same number as Mike Mussina), Bagwell needs to pick up at least 12 more votes to make the 75% needed Last year Newsday's Steven Marcus only voted for Trevor Hoffman and Ken Griffey, Jr. This year his only two selections are Trevor Hoffman and Vladimir Guerrero.

*The seven-year old kid that wrote Jeff Luhnow is now Elementary School Famous.

*Colby Rasmus made ESPN's Danny Espinoza All-Star Team for players who can't be defined by a single stat.

*Alex Speier wrote about the Red Sox players involved in the Chris Sale deal.

*People in Corpus are being advised not to drink the tap water.