First up, Alyson Footer and Jonathan Mayo tweeted that Jason Castro will be in the AFL Rising Stars Game at 7 p.m. Saturday on the MLB Network. You'll also get to see other guys, like Stephen Strasberg, Dustin Ackerley and Drew Storen. But the cool part is Castro, if you're an Astros fan.
- Remember this when we talk about free agent pitchers...was this really a hunting accident? Or did Frank McCourt do this to drive down Padilla's price on the market?
- Speaking of my favorite divorcing owner, a judge recently ruled his wife couldn't get her job back. Isn't that nice? For more coverage of this crazy, crazy case (including a very interesting post on how the McCourts purchased and financed the team), there's a blog devoted specifically to the case: Dodger Divorce: How the McCourts came to own the Dodgers.
- Why is it so hard for me to hate the best player on the team I despise the most? Because he's a really, really good guy...
- McTaggart has a nice post on the Astros filing for free agency. Interesting speculation about Jon Garland. What say ye?
- I don't know if you've stumbled across this yet, but some of the eggheads over at Harvard got together and created a blog on sports. It's (obviously) pretty smart and on sports other than baseball, but here's a thought-provoking piece on parity in baseball. It's much more thought-provoking than Justice's latest blog post on the subject, simply because it doesn't bring years of bias into the equation.
- Just a quick note that one possible Astros target, Akinori Iwamura, was traded to the Pirates. Some interesting articles popped up all across the web here and here. I'm formulating a longer post based on these articles about the general state of the GMs in the National League Central, but it probably won't be up until Monday. Hold your breath until then....
- Speaking of Justice, here's his plan for the 2009 offseason. Personally, I prefer DQ's plan...
- In the department of making me feel hopelessly inadequate, this 27-year old just got the GM job of a minor league team. What have I done? Not taken over a baseball team, that's for sure...