Daily Links - 7/30/08

Here is Baseball Prospectus' take on the Mark Teixeira trade. On the other side of the ledger, here is a post that calls the trade a mistake for the Angels.

This just wasn't the year for the Braves. Despite what I said yesterday about their acquisition of Teixeira being a failure, they were positioned at the beginning of this season to be a contender in the NL East. Then all of their pitchers got hurt, Jeff Francouer fell apart, Chipper kept getting dinged up (while in the midst of his best season), and now Tim Hudson might be out for the next 18 months.

This is a cool article that uses pitch f/x to visualize a platoon split for a batter.

Some teams (like say, the Astros) are in acquisition mode at the deadline and it really doesn't make a lot of sense. But what if the Astros have decided that the best way to truly rebuild their franchise is to amass draft picks. So to do this, they are trying to trade some of their mediocre talent to get veterans in the last year of their contract, hoping to get draft pick compensation when the veterans leave via free agency. If the veterans can lead them to semi-respectability at the same time, all the better. I'm not saying that I agree with this strategy (although the Astros farm system is horrible and could use an infusion of draft picks) and it is probably more likely that the Astros are just delusional, but what if acquiring expiring contracts becomes as fashionable as it is in the NBA?

This is a great article about why we should not be upset with players for making so much money, but rather the men that pay them.