I’d “express interest” in every big-ticket free agent. Doesn’t cost anything, and you never actually have to pony up the money to sign one, but it might at least give other players the impression that you’re a player in the market again for more than scraps.

I’m a copy editor, and my two-second reaction was that the Times’ lifting without attribution is a big journalism no-no. But on reflection, it’s just a list of facts, easily available to anyone with access to bb-ref and a search program. The facts belong to all of us, as opposed to quotes or anecdotes and other information gleaned by visual observation.

You might say it’s wrong for Crasnick to do the actual research and the Times to just “borrow” it, but think how many times it’s probably been written (after the first guy actually dug up the numbers) that, for example, “Barry Bonds is the first player to [combine X Y and Z stats]” without attribution. Probably nobody even knows who did the actual number-crunching. Or if I wrote “Nate McLouth hit X with Y homers and Z RBIs in 2008,” which is obviously something Dejan has probably written 10 or 12 times this winter. It’s a collection of numbers. If Crasnick had drawn some conclusion from those numbers — “Abreu is the best hitter available” or something like that — and the Times cribbed it as well, maybe that takes it over the line.

Obviously, the polite thing to do would be to mention Crasnick, but I don’t know that it was a sin not to.

Sportswriters and especially baseball writers are (or used to be) notorious for borrowing from each other. Many years ago I happened to look at the Sunday notes columns written by writers at papers at Newsday and I think it was Providence one weekend, and about a third of the notes were identical. I don’t know if it’s the practice anymore, maybe the baseball writing fraternity isn’t as chummy as it used to be, but my understanding is these guys had 40-inch Sunday columns to fill and would swap their notes all the time. And nobody bothered with niceties such as “Jerry Crasnick did some research and …” If one guy found out something like that, it belonged to all of them.

I heard a lot of Griffey to the Angels rumors but those seem no longer relevant since Abreu signed.

wait Boras and Manny out.

There is NO WAY that the Dodgers, or anyone else, should go longer than one year, and I think that offering him $20-25 million as a base salary is totally absurd.

Manny was playing “hard” in LA last year to get the BIG contract. Anyone that offers him more than a one year deal with heavy incentives is making a BIG mistake. Let him earn the big money through production.

He is a great player whenever he decides to play. It’s hard to motivate the very few eccentric players like Manny.

Who are the Dodgers bidding against?

my comment above.