More Hardball comes up with a list of ... well, see for yourself:

I am a baseball geek, therefore I find tremendous joy in even the smallest of baseball related maneuvers. For instance, the minor league contract with non-roster spring training invite. The following is a 25-man roster composed of the "best" MLB players that saw time in the majors last season.

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As expected the starting lineup and rotation are weak. However, the bench and bullpen would likely be better than some real MLB teams'. Thames can also play LF/RF, Sweeney would platoon with Jacobs at 1st, and MacDougal would be the closer.

Marcus Thames can't play every day, and shouldn't play the outfield often at all. Mike Sweeney and Mike Jacobs would probably constitute the best all-Mike first-base platoon in the majors. Mike MacDougal? Well, at least he'll keep the ball in the park.

No, I found just one truly interesting name on the list: Chad Tracy.*

* Bobby Scales was interesting until he finally got his shot with the Cubs last summer. You can still root for him, but how to choose among all the other Triple-A lifers?

Do you remember what Chad Tracy did, just a few years ago? As a rookie in 2004, Tracy batted .285/.343/.407, which wasn't as nearly as impressive in 2004 as it would have been in 1974 but was something to build upon.

And boy, did he build. In 2005, Tracy slashed .308/.359/.553 and looked like a future star.

In the four seasons since, Tracy's been a below-average National League hitter, which is unacceptable when your best position is first base.

I don't expect a bounce-back. In Tracy's one Triple-A season, his batting average was .324.

In his first two major league seasons, it was .297.

Since then it's been .267 and sinking faster than a cannonball in the kiddie pool.

The punchline -- well, except that it's not at all funny -- is that Tracy would have been a fine hitter with a long, productive, and incredibly profitable career, except he got hurt. It wasn't because he didn't have enough talent, and I doubt that it's because he didn't work hard enough. He just got hurt, more than once, and there's no reason to think he'll ever be the same.

Somewhere inside Chad Tracy, there's still a hitter fighting like hell to get out. That hitter might conceivably be good enough to pinch-hit two or three times a week or even platoon at first base. Given what's happened the last couple of seasons, though, I suspect the hitter's going to lose that fight to the fragile shell around him.