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Via Dylan Hernandez, the biggest bit of non-news of the off-season so far:

Manny Ramirez will return to the Dodgers next season, according to his agent, Scott Boras.

Boras said that he informed General Manager Ned Colletti today that Ramirez would not exercise the escape clause in the two-year, $45-million contract he signed in the spring.

Ramirez will earn $20 million next season.

"Obviously, he enjoys L.A.," Boras said. "If he went into the marketplace, the real negative was that he could end up playing in a place he wasn't comfortable playing."

Really? When an enormously talented player goes into the marketplace, can't he essentially play wherever he likes? At the right price, I suspect that Manny Ramirez could end up playing in Kansas City or New York or almost anywhere in between (except Boston).

If Ramirez went into the marketplace, the real negative was that he could wind up making a lot less than $20 million season.

And of course Scott Boras knows that better than anyone.

Buried at the very end of an update that's mostly about the Phillies exploring replacements for Pedro Feliz -- due $5 million if he's a Phillie again next season -- is this tiny item:

Closer Brad Lidge is scheduled to have his right elbow examined today, said Amaro. Lidge might have “loose bodies” in the elbow, the same issue that sidelined lefthander Scott Eyre in September.

If it turns out that Lidge was pitching hurt all season, someone should be fired.

Won't these people ever learn?

New York Daily News guest columnist David Wells tells it like it is:

"Let's end one debate before it really gets started. The Red Sox gave it a nice run for a while, but the Yankees are the team of the decade -- again.

I can just imagine what the scene in Red Sox Nation is about now. The fans are bitter. Very bitter. The Yankees are back on top, and that can't be sitting too well in New England."

You should read the whole thing because Wells has some choice words for Mel Stottlemyre and Joe Torre regarding the 2003 World Series. But I want to revisit this team-of-the-decade thing, since I first addressed it a couple of months ago. What I wrote is below.

---

The answer to the question has to be the Yankees or the Red Sox. A few relevant numbers:

• Wins: Yankees 955, Red Sox 909
• Postseason Wins: Yankees 41, Red Sox 34
• American League pennants: Yankees 3, Red Sox 2
• World Championships: Red Sox 2, Yankees 1

Gosh, it's not as close as I thought.

If the Yankees advance farther than the Red Sox next month, it's a landslide.

If the Red Sox reach the World Series but don't win, you might make an argument for them, based on the primacy of world championships, their historical significance, their sentimental value, and their jewel of a ballpark.

If the Red Sox do win the World Series, then you'd have a pretty decent case because of their big edge in world championships and American League pennants, and because they would have closed (and perhaps eliminated) the Yankees' edge in postseason wins.

So yes, the jury's still out. As usual in those parts, nothing will be decided until autumn in New England.

---

Well, autumn didn't go so well in New England, while it went smashingly in New York. The updated numbers:

• Wins: Yankees 965, Red Sox 920
• Postseason Wins: Yankees 52, Red Sox 34
• American League pennants: Yankees 4, Red Sox 2
• World Championships: Red Sox 2, Yankees 2

Landslide. Sorry, Nation.

As I continue to marvel at Mariano Rivera's postseason career, my friend Mark Armour sent me this:

Rivera

One way to look at Mo's post-season career is to prorate it to a singular regular season. The Yankees have played 140 postseason games during Mo's career, going 89-51 and winning 20 of 29 series. Prorating Rivera (and the Yankees) from 140 games to 162 games, the Yankees have had this guy sitting in their bullpen for 14 Octobers:

Games: 102
Innings: 154
ERA: 0.74
Record: 9-1
Saves: 45

Mariano Rivera has never won a Cy Young Award; he's finished twice once, and third three times. He's never won an MVP award, with his best finishes a couple of ninths (in both 2004 and '5). I won't argue that he deserves to have done better. That's just the nature of 21st-century relief pitching: they don't pitch enough innings to rank among the very most valuable players.

But what if you had a relief pitcher who threw 154 innings with a sub-1.00 ERA? That would get your (and the award voters') attention, wouldn't it? I doubt if Rivera has been the Yankees' most valuable player over the last 14 years. That would almost certainly be Derek Jeter, with Bernie Williams being a part of the conversation as well.

I do suspect that Rivera has been the Yankees' most valuable postseason player, though, because you have to figure he's been roughly twice as valuable in the postseason as in the regular season.

It's probably worth mentioning that it's not only Rivera's value that grows in the postseason. The same is true of great starting pitchers, who typically will throw a significantly higher percentage of their teams' innings in the postseason than in the regular season. For example, in 2001, Curt Schilling threw 18 percent of the Diamondbacks' regular-season innings, but 31 percent of his team's postseason innings. With a 1.12 ERA. Try prorating that.

Of course, Rivera's been doing it for a long time and nearly all of his innings have come in high-leverage situations. Purely in terms of increasing his teams' chances of winning, he must be the most valuable pitcher in postseason history, and that might be true even if we adjust for the expanded postseason format. I'm still waiting for that analysis, though ...

Tim Dierkes' take on the trade that sends J.J. Hardy to the Twins and Carlos Gomez to the Brewers:

While I expected the Brewers to snag a young pitcher for Hardy, I like the move for both sides. Center field was certainly a need for the Brewers with Mike Cameron eligible for free agency. Haudricourt notes that the money the Brewers saved on Cameron will probably go toward starting pitching. While Gomez hasn't had offensive success in his career, his stellar defense is unquestionable. He'll be eligible for arbitration this winter as a Super Two player, and is under team control through 2013.

Hardy is a huge addition for the Twins, who entered the offseason needing upgrades at shortstop, third base, and second base. Due to an August demotion by the Brewers, Hardy is under team control for 2010 and 2011 (Hardy says there are "no hard feelings.") He slumped offensively this year, but maintained his strong defense.

If you've got an arbitration-eligible player, you would much prefer one whose strength is defense rather than offense, because that's a more difficult case for the player's side to make. Gomez's lifetime on-base percentage is .292, his slugging percentage is .346, and those are the numbers for which he'll mostly be paid. And yes, Gomez does play fantastic defense, even better than Cameron. (I ranked Gomez fourth on my Fielding Bible ballot, and he might have been higher if he'd played more.)

But what a zero, offensively! Yes, he's just now turning 24. But however young, you'd like to see a bit of progress, right? Gomez's seasonal OBPs: .288, .296, .287. That looks like a guy who just doesn't get it, at all. Sure, he did much better while still just a baby in both Double- and Triple-A, but those seasons are starting to seem like a long time ago.

Still, the Brewers need a center fielder and Gomez is cheap (particularly compared to Cameron). Between the money they won't be spending on Cameron and the money they won't be spending on Hardy, the Brewers have gained a fair degree of payroll flexibility, which is the lifeblood of every financially challenged general manager.

And of course you have to love this deal for the Twins, who got a player they really wanted (for good reason) in exchange for a guy they didn't really want at all. That said, unless they get another outfielder, this move means more playing time for Delmon Young, and it's not at all clear that that's a good thing. And if anything should happen to Michael Cuddyer ...

In the wake of Championship No. 27, Joe Posnanski revisited an old favorite: the Yankees' money. And even though I know I'm not supposed to, I couldn't help getting a little worked up. That's just how good Joe is.

And then I came to this:

In 2003, the Yankees spent $35 million more in payroll than any other team.

In 2004, the Yankees spent $57 million more in payroll than any other team. I mean, it's ridiculous from the start but this is pure absurdity. Basically, this is like the Yankees saying: "OK, let's spend exactly as much as the second-highest payroll in baseball. OK, we're spending exactly as much. And now ... let's add the Oakland A's. No, I mean let's add their whole team, the whole payroll, add it on top and let's play some ball!"

In 2005, the Yankees spent $85 million more than any other team. Not a misprint. Eight five.

In 2006, the Yankees spent $74 million more than any other team.

In 2007, the Yankees spent $40 million more than any other team -- cutbacks, you know.

In 2008, the Yankees spent $72 million more than any other team.

In 2009, the Yankees spent $52 million more than any other team.

The Conventional Wisdom, I think, is that last winter the Yankees really broke the bank when they signed CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira and A.J. Burnett. But look at those numbers! In four other seasons -- seasons in which the Yankees did not win the World Series -- the gap between the Yankees and the No. 2 team was larger than it was this year.

What's easy to forget is that even as the Yankees' payroll has expanded, other teams have been spending more money, too. And they're spending more money, why? Because they have it, thanks to ever-increasing revenues. In fact, considering the growing pie, the Yankees' payroll as a percentage of all payrolls seems to have trended downward over the last five years. This a good thing, right?

Granted, payrolls don't tell the whole story. The Yankees are probably outspending everyone else to sign amateur talent, too. And we don't yet know what the new Yankee Stadium will mean.

The takeaway from all this isn't that the Yankees can spend their way to a World Championship every year. The last eight years have taught us otherwise. The takeaway is that the Yankees can spend their way to a playoff spot every year, and with a little lucky and a bit of intelligence they'll be front-runners for the World Championship.

But we already knew that, didn't we?

I wasn't sure what to make of the Red Sox trading for Jeremy Hermida, so I went to Fire Brand of the American League.

Hermida is very unlikely to be a starting outfielder for the Boston club next year, but he’s solid depth in case things go awry. Only turning 26, the potential is there for him to realize what made him said 11th pick in the draft.

He’s a left-handed bat, and he has a rather steep platoon split over his career: .792 OPS against right-handers, .697 against lefties. This past season, his OPS was .786 against righties and .601 against lefties. Even if he never learns how to hit left-handed pitching, this guy is very capable of being our brand new Trot Nixon ...

If Hermida opens the season as a starting outfielder (even if it’s in a platoon situation), it will signal that Boston views 2010 as a transitional year; a year that the team can compete, but not at a high level.

There's no way that "Boston" heads into 2010 aiming for anything less than 95 wins and a trip to the World Series. If Jason Bay's not re-signed and Hermida winds up in left field, he'll have a decent platoon partner and the Red Sox won't be awful in left field. Granted, they won't be as good as they were in 2009, which means they'll have to improve somewhere else. The two obvious candidates are shortstop and catcher and they're already on track to improve at both positions with full seasons from Alex Gonzalez and Victor Martinez. Throw in little bounce-backs from (still) youngsters Dustin Pedroia and Jacoby Ellsbury, and I'd say the Red Sox are one right-handed bat away from having a lineup with which they can feel confident in.

Bob Dutton on a trade that quickly turned into a trade rumor:

Merely hours after the New York Yankees secured their 27th World Series title, a report claimed the Royals have agreed to send outfielder Mark Teahen to the Chicago White Sox for second baseman Chris Getz and third baseman/outfielder Josh Fields.

The report first appeared in the New York Daily News and gained steam when the Chicago Sun-Times cited confirmation from the White Sox. It now appears those reports, at best, are premature.

--snip--

Teahen and Getz each said they have heard nothing about a trade, while Fields could not be reached for comment. Teahen even tweeted: “No official word. Still sporting Royal blue …”

That also suggests no deal is close because players are often required to undergo physical examinations before a trade’s completion. That would seem particularly true in this case because Getz is recovering from Oct. 2 surgery to correct a sports hernia that limited his time over the final two months.

All indications suggest the two clubs discussed a deal, but club officials acknowledge transactions become harder to complete when leaked prematurely to the public.

Even so, this trade seems to offer something to both sides.

Sure. I just wonder if the "something" is anything worth getting.

Getz has spent the last four seasons at Double-A, Double-A, Triple-A, and in the majors. He was (in order) not good, good, good, and not good. Also, the numbers suggest that he is, like Royals incumbent Alberto Callaspo, not much of a fielder at second base. So trading for Getz might make sense only if trading Callaspo results in an upgrade at another position.

And as Dutton points out, Josh Fields simply doesn't fit anywhere. The Royals already have a young third baseman [Alex Gordon] and a young first baseman [Billy Butler], and Fields doesn't run well enough to play the outfield or hit well enough to be the designated hitter.

I can understand why the Royals would want to shed Teahen's contract; he's arbitration-eligible and figures to earn at least $5 million next season, and the Royals really can't justify spending $5 million on a player like Teahen. I can't understand why they'd want a couple of players like Getz and Fields, except that Fields does seem to have a bit of upside with the bat.

Update: Well, it's done. And the Royals even sent some money to the White Sox to help pay Teahen's salary. So the beat goes on. On and on and on ...

In the wake of yet another brilliant postseason performance, Dave Allen looks at Mariano Rivera's pitches and goes a fair piece toward explaining just what makes Mo so great:

Rivera is a great pitcher, so we should not be surprised when he has an amazing run of 16 innings. But that does not mean that he can will himself to pitch 16 one-run innings whenever he chooses. So in this post, when I look back at his amazing performance, I don’t want it to sound like I think this was inevitable and there was no way he could have given up any runs. Rather, I am just looking back and seeing how it happened.

--snip--

Again you see the bimodal distribution of pitches either along the inside edge or outside edge. Against RHBs he mixes in his fastball. Batters swung at it more often than his cutter and made contact at a good rate, but they were fouls or outs. With the cutter he got lots of whiffs up-and-in, called strikes down-and-in, and got more swings and contact, again mostly outs or foul balls, away.

Anyway that you look at it, another sixteen incredible innings in the career of the best relief pitcher ever.

That's my new favorite baseball term: bimodal distribution. It means that most of Rivera's pitches cross one edge of the plate or the other, and it is perhaps the best explanation for Rivera's success.

Maybe his postseason numbers are merely a subset that fits nicely within the larger set of Rivera's career numbers. Maybe he doesn't have some special ability to thrive on the biggest stage. Two points about that, though:

1. He has pitched better in the postseason, which has to count for something.
2. There's actually some evidence that he does pitch differently when the chips are really down.

	Nick Laham/Getty Images
	There is evidence that Mariano Rivera does pitch better when the stakes are high.

First, the performance: Rivera's career ERA in the regular season is 2.25, which of course is brilliant. But his postseason ERA -- and we're talking about 133 innings -- is 0.74. And that's not just an ERA fluke. While Rivera always does everything well, he does almost everything better in the postseason. Rivera's strikeout rate actually is lower in the postseason, but he more than makes up for that with a lower walk rate.

But it's the home runs that really tell the tale. In his regular-season career, Rivera has given up 0.5 home runs per nine innings, which, depending on where you set the innings cutoff, might be viewed as the all-time record. In the postseason, though? Rivera has allowed 0.14 home runs per nine innings -- two home runs in 133 innings. There's some luck there, of course. On the other hand, Rivera has done all of that against good (or great) teams, the vast majority of them with good (or great) lineups.

As if his rate stats weren't enough, all those two-inning postseason stints further separate him from his peers.

One thing I've never seen: a measure of postseason value. We can look at how many wins a player adds, based on performance and "leverage"; that is, the state of the game when the player does what he does. Protecting a one-run lead for two innings is obviously more valuable than protecting a three-run lead for one innings, and we know how to measure that value. But I think it would be useful to incorporate that analysis within the larger context of postseason series. It's one thing to say that Rivera has been worth 5.3 postseason wins in his career, but wouldn't you rather know how many championships he's been worth?

Anyway, if you want to take a shot at that, feel free (and you're welcome). Not that Rivera's reputation needs any help.

Is it too early to start thinking about next year? Hardly. If Charlie Manuel is already thinking about 2010, why can't we? David Brown:

Phillies manager Charlie Manuel might have been conflating the top line from "Terminator" with a famous quote from World War II superstar general Douglas MacArthur, but his point was clear:

This isn't the last we'll see of his Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series.

"I'm gonna tell you something. We will be back," Manuel said. "As MacArthur said, I guess, we will be back."

MacArthur might have been talking about retaking the Philippines from Japan, but Gen. Manuel probably means it just as much as ol' corn cob pipe (right) did. These have been two amazing seasons put together by the Phillies, who have proven just by getting back to the World Series that success doesn't have to be fleeting.

Of course, what that brilliant self-promoter MacArthur really said was, "I shall return."

That's OK. Charlie Manuel's a baseball manager, not a history professor (or student, probably).

Brown says the Phillies can return to the World Series if they do just three things:

1. Sign John Lackey
2. Sign Mark Derosa and dispose of Pedro Feliz

Actually, the third thing isn't really a thing. What does "take your best guess with Brad Lidge" mean, exactly? That's not much of a prescription, if you ask me. I suppose Brown means the Phillies need to actually figure out what's going on with Lidge, which is true. How one figures Brad Lidge out, though, I haven't the slightest idea.

Obviously, signing Lackey would be a good thing (at least in the short term). But it's not like the Phillies are exactly hurting for starters. Even if Pedro Martinez doesn't return, the Phillies' top four of Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels, J.A. Happ, and Joe Blanton ranks right near the top of National League rotations, and Brett Myers is a perfectly useful No. 5 starter.

Replacing Feliz with DeRosa is fine, I guess. DeRosa's the better hitter, and advantage just partially balanced by Feliz's superior defense. Making the switch would add perhaps another win for the Phillies ... but at what cost? You have to sign DeRosa to a multiyear contract and take a loss on Feliz?

The Phillies should try to improve this season, for the simple reason that some of the things that went right this year will go wrong next year. Baseball teams are like sharks: If they're not moving forward, they're dying. Where do they improve? If they can't (or don't want) to sign Lackey, there are two obvious moves.

One, get younger.

Two, build a better bullpen.

The Phillies' youngest every-day player is Shane Victorino, who turns 29 in a few weeks. The Phillies are not old. Only Feliz (34) and Raul Ibanez (37) are beyond their early 30s. But every single regular is theoretically past his prime, and that alone might result in two or three fewer wins next season. And replacing Feliz with DeRosa -- who's also 34 -- won't change that. And Ibanez is locked up through 2011. Bottom line, the Phillies will probably enter 2010 with almost exactly the same lineup with which they ended 2009.

Which leaves only the bullpen. The Phillies won 93 games this year. Brad Lidge blew 11 saves and lost eight games. The key ingredient in another 93-win recipe is a closer who instead blows five saves and loses four games. Those guys are out there, and they don't all cost a great deal of money. Ruben Amaro isn't likely to get super-creative this winter; general managers of pennant-winning teams rarely do. But he just has to be creative enough to find a couple of dependable relief pitchers. Which is one of the easiest things in professional sports.

Hero: Hideki Matsui drove in six runs to essentially beat the Phillies all by his lonesome. It might not be the greatest World Series game by a Yankee, but it might wind up being the best game ever by a Yankee in his last game as a Yankee.

	Ron Vesely/Getty Images
	Hideki Matsui's home run gave the Yankees a lead they would never relinquish.

Goat: Charlie Manuel never did figure out his bullpen. Not during the regular season, and not during the postseason. When Pedro Martinez left Game 6 after the fourth inning, the Phillies were down but not out. Three quick runs later, and their chances of winning had dropped below 5 percent. (Also, a number of Manuel's hitters didn't do much hitting in this Series, including -- but not limited to -- Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins, and Pedro Feliz.

Turning Point: Just about every time Matsui batted. Too obvious? Well, in the top of the seventh with two Phillies aboard, Damaso Marte trotted in from the bullpen and struck out Chase Utley with three pitches. With Mariano Rivera lurking in the bullpen, Utley's checked-swing third strike sucked nearly all of the life out of any potential comeback.

Good Move: Obviously, Joe Girardi's decision to use only three starters in the World Series "worked" because the Yankees won the World Series. Nobody pitched brilliantly on short rest -- CC Sabathia got lifted in the seventh inning, Andy Pettitte in the sixth, and, of course, A.J. Burnett got blasted -- but with that lineup, the Yankees don't have to pitch brilliantly to win. They just have to keep their club in the game, and Sabathia and Pettitte both did that.

Costly Move: During the regular season, J.A. Happ went 12-4 with a 2.93 ERA. Somehow, Manuel was able to get Happ only two and one-third innings of work, all in relief, during the World Series.

Telling Statistic: The Yankees are now 204-1 when Rivera has been asked to protect a four-run lead.

For more: Crashburn Alley on what went wrong for Pedro, and It's About the Money (Stupid!) offers 27 thoughts for 27 championships.

Mike Lupica on the risks that Joe Girardi just keeps taking:

There are still a lot of smart, passionate, grudge-holding Yankee fans who want to talk about all the pitching mistakes that Joe Torre made when the Red Sox started to come back on the Yankees in 2004. But when Torre came home in that American League Championship Series, the way Girardi's Yankees come home now, here were Torre's starters:

Jon Lieber, Game 6.

Kevin Brown, Game 7.

Girardi? He has the winningest starter in postseason history tonight in Pettitte, his ace Sabathia waiting in the wings if the Phillies make it to tomorrow night. Of course both are going on three days' rest because the Yankees have only three starters they trust, at a time when the only other pitcher Girardi really trusts is the great Mariano Rivera. By now everybody knows that the last team to win a World Series going with just three starters was the '91 Twins.

Josh Beckett went on three days' rest in Game 6 of the 2003 Series, Marlins against the Yankees. Everybody screamed that Jack McKeon was making a huge mistake, that he should wait and pitch Beckett on full rest in Game 7 if it came to that. The Marlins manager went all in with Beckett and he pitched one of the most dominating close-out games in the history of the World Series.

He made McKeon right because he won.

--snip--

Girardi plays things his way to the end and good for him. He still has the better team in this Series. Burnett getting pounded doesn't change that. The Yankees should win it all tonight. Then the manager's right. Better be right.

I think Lupica's right. I think Girardi had better be right.

If he's not right -- that is, if the Yankees lose because Pettitte and Sabathia both got hammered -- his job probably won't be in danger. After all, it's far from obvious what else he might have done. Chad Gaudin has thrown exactly 42 pitches in real competition since September. Maybe that's Girardi's fault, but again it's far from obvious what else he might have done. The Yankees certainly didn't need Gaudin to start in the Division or League Championship Series, and while Girardi presumably could have gotten Gaudin another inning or three of relief work along the way, that wouldn't change today's equation.

But nobody ever wants to do that, presumably because it's so bloody unorthodox. Sure, you can get away with it in the middle of the summer, particularly if you've got to play two games in one day. But if you try it in the World Series, the media will murder you before the game and they'll really murder you if you lose.

Of course, Girardi's setting himself up to get murdered anyway. Any time you do something unorthodox and lose, the media will kill you. If that does happen, may I suggest a line of attack? When Jack McKeon started Josh Beckett on short rest six years ago, he looked at Beckett and thought, "This pitcher can do this thing."

Girardi, on the other hand, looked at his three starters and thought, "All of these pitchers can do this thing.

Girardi might be absolutely right. There are certainly a lot of old-timers who think that every starting pitcher should be able to fare quite well after just three days of rest (and if they don't, it's all in their baby heads).

But we can't know if Girardi is right. We can only know if it works. Which is why those two theoretically disparate things become, in the end, the same.

There's nothing like a couple of great weeks in October (and November) to ramp up the hyperbole. Case in point:

Utley

Given that the New York Yankees are soaking up all the World Series oxygen, it's no wonder Philadelphia's Chase Utley isn't getting heaps of praise. But here's something to ponder while watching Game 6: Mr. Utley may be the best second baseman in baseball. Ever.

--snip--

Certainly, Mr. Hornsby, Eddie Collins or Joe Morgan, all Hall of Fame second basemen, might have a bone to pick. But Mr. Utley, 30, is on pace to have more hits than Mr. Morgan's 2,517, he's got infinitely more power than Mr. Collins -- who, admittedly, played in a very different era -- and is a better defender than Mr. Hornsby.

I've been as big a cheerleader for Chase Utley as anyone these last few years. But the greatest second baseman, ever?

Beginning with the obvious ... Mr. Utley is on pace to have more hits than Mr. Morgan?

Mr. Utley's got 978 hits, leaving him 1,539 short of Mr. Morgan. In Mr. Utley's five seasons as an every-day player, he has averaged 175 hits per season, which means he needs to continue doing exactly what he's doing for another nine seasons, or until he's almost 40.

Impossible? No. But as you might guess, Messrs' Hornsby, Collins, and Morgan all slowed down a bit as they played through their 30s. Most players do.

Utley's "problem" is that he got something of a late start for a player with his talents. He debuted in the majors at 24, and took over as the Phillies' every-day second baseman at 25. He's now got five great seasons under his belt, compared to (roughly) 14 for Hornsby, 15 for Collins, and 11 or 12 for Morgan. Essentially, Utley is still at least five great seasons away from being even a part of the conversation.

If Andy Pettitte wins tonight, a lot of people are going to say a lot of nice things about him. As Sean Forman suggests, however -- and I'm snipping all the relevant analysis, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't read it -- let's not go nuts:

Recently, the blogosphere and the mainstream news media have begun speculating on Pettitte’s Hall of Fame chances.

But while his supporters will cite his won-lost totals and record number of victories in the postseason, the deeper you look at his numbers, the less convincing his case becomes.

--snip--

Barring five more strong seasons and a run at 300 wins, I find myself opposing Andy Pettitte’s Hall of Fame candidacy. I’ll leave you with one parting shot. Pettitte is definitely a Hall of Famer at picking off runners. If we estimate runners on first with singles plus walks and hit-by-pitch, Pettitte has the fourth-best pickoff rate (since 1954) at 3.4 percent of runners on first, just behind Steve Carlton, Bill Lee and Mark Langston.

I knew that Mark Langston was tough on runners. Steve Carlton and Bill Lee, though? It's amazing the stuff you can learn if you actually look stuff up.

The Pettitte-for-Cooperstown talk started popping up a year or two ago, and I was generally dismissive. As Sean details -- I've just given you a small bit of his analysis -- Pettitte simply hasn't done many of the things that Hall of Fame pitchers are supposed to do.

You can get into the Hall of Fame with a (relatively) pedestrian ERA if you win 300 games; that's what Don Sutton did.

You get even get into the Hall of Fame with a (relatively) pedestrian ERA if you win only 225 games, but come up big in the postseason and pitch brilliantly for a few seasons; that's what Catfish Hunter did.

But Pettitte's got the pedestrian ERA, (roughly) 225 wins, zero top-three Cy Young finishes, and a postseason ledger that falls almost exactly in line with his regular-season performance. The only brilliant thing about Pettitte's career is his .629 winning percentage ... and as Sean points out, Pettitte has usually been blessed with an incredibly potent offense on his side (not to mention an incredibly effective closer).

As I've written before, we shouldn't dismiss Pettitte's chances of winning 300 games. But despite that great offense and that great closer, he's won only 14 games in each of the last two seasons. If he wins 14 games in each of the next five seasons -- he would turn 42 in that fifth season -- he'll be sitting on 299 wins. That's not impossible, but the problem is that if he winds up with any other team, those 14's start turning into 11's and 12's (at best). We shouldn't expect his ERA to get better, either.

Realistically, we're probably three years away from Pettitte-for-Cooperstown talk as being anything but rank speculation. And that goes double when you remember that some Hall of Fame voters have flat-out said they won't vote for any known steroid user.

Today's links come to you ... aw, the heck with the silly intro. You're better than that.

* If Chase Utley's team loses the World Series but he's named World Series MVP, it would be a big surprise ... but he wouldn't be the first!

* Remember, friends: Guns don't shoot Dodgers pitchers in the leg; Dodger pitchers' bodyguards shoot Dodgers pitchers in the leg.

* OK, so we won't blame the Rays for trading Akinori Iwamura for a fungible relief pitcher ... but did they really have to give him away?

* So you thought Cole Hamels didn't say anything all that terrible in the first place? Now it seems even less terrible, in context.

* Another useful guide to how the other half lives (and buys a baseball franchise).

* Johnny Damon's one-man double steal? It wasn't just the greatest play in World Series history. It was the most incredible athletic feat in the history of humankind. No, but seriously, didn't you wonder who should have been covering third on that play? If the Tampa Rays had been afield, it would have the shortstop's job to cover third, with the catcher reminding the pitcher to get over there in case the shortstop couldn't make it in time. There are other ways, though. You might recall that in 2003, Derek Jeter was injured in the Yankees' opener while trying to advance to an (apparently) uncovered third base. But Blue Jays catcher Ken Huckaby beat Jeter to the base and tagged him out. Worse -- or better, depending on your perspective -- Jeter slammed into Huckaby's body armor and missed the next six weeks of the season. I wonder, though, who covered the plate in Huckaby's absence?

* Also seriously, Keith Olbermann comes up with the nine smartest plays in World Series history.

* For those of you interested in such things, here's a comparison of some prognosticators (and I suggest clicking through some of the links therein). The takeaway, though? CHONE is looking real fine ...

* Sometimes you have a rough week. It's not anything that your friends or your family have done, nor anything that the Phillies or the Yankees have done. But sometimes events conspire to make you wonder what exactly you're doing here. And then, a lightning bolt: a wonderful bit of news like this, and suddenly the world starts to make sense again.