If you were curious about Charlie Brown’s composite baseball statistics Wezen-Ball has calculated them for you. They’ve taken the time to go through 2 decades of Peanuts comics to provide a detailed analysis of the 60s and 70s. It’s glorious and compulsive documentation. I approve.V

Via Baseball Musings

In this article about the Red Sox’ recent moves, Alex Speier touches on their trade of Casey Kotchman for Mariners’ utility man Bill Hall. It’s been said this offseason that the Sox are especially concerned about the luxury tax and are doing everything in their power to remain under the $170 million salary threshold. This threshold is determined based on the average annual value of a contract, Bill hall’s 4 years at $24 million for instance would be a cost of $6 million against the luxury tax threshold. However, since his contract was structured differently, and since the Brewers were paying the Mariners almost the full amount of the contract, Bill Hall’s expiring contract is actually worth around -$1.5 million against the threshold.

Expiring contracts have a significant trade value in the NBA, but I’ve never heard of any baseball trades being made for this reason. Bill Simmons goes so far as to suffix Expiring Contract onto the end of any player in the last year of a contract, so at the very least, we should refer to Bill Hall as Bill Hall’s Expiring Contract for this season, right?

Hall is in the last guaranteed year of a four-year, $24 million deal that will pay him $8.4 million next season. The Mariners, according to a major-league source, will pay $7.5-8 million of his salary — essentially sending the Sox the same money that was given to Seattle by the Brewers when the M’s acquired Hall last summer.

Hall’s contract is evaluated for luxury tax purposes as being worth $6 million in 2010, based on its AAV. But the full amount of the cash transfer — call it $7.5 million — will be deducted from the Sox’ payroll as determined for luxury tax purposes. That being the case, Hall will actually reduce the Sox’ payroll in calculating the competitive balance tax by roughly $1.5 million dollars. Overall, then, the Sox were able to sign Beltre and add Hall and a player to be named at a cost (for CBT purposes) of roughly $2 million in 2010.

Via Dave.

The on again, off again movie version of Michael Lewis’ book, Moneyball, is back on. Bennett Miller, director of Capote, has been brought in to steer this ship home. He will, apparently, be taking the movie in a direction different, and more mainstream, than original director Steven Soderbergh.

Here’s a video of Michael Lewis explaining the origin of The Blind Side. There’s about 15 people in the theater when he does.

If it’s pettiness you crave, here’s a bazillion word, 2 part series on The Forgotten Man Of Moneyball, Eric Walker. In an interesting move assuring a constant bias, the author of the piece is that forgotten man, Eric Walker.

Lastly, I’d like to again ask why Liar’s Poker has not yet been made into a movie.

The Tampa Bay Rays Executive VP Andrew Friedman doesn’t have a contract for some reason. Thanks, Dave!

Sports Illustrated took a look back at Upper Deck and isn’t too optimistic about the future of card collecting. Tucked into this ____ (what’s the word for when a newspaper prints an obituary before someone is dead?) are a few interesting facts about Upper Deck like:

The image of Griffey that became part of collecting lore, with his blue turtleneck and ‘fro-mullet tucked beneath his cap, was doctored. In his home office in Corona, Calif., 75 miles north of Upper Deck’s headquarters, Tom Geideman hands me a Polaroid that had been sitting atop a binder of Griffey cards and says, “This—it’s cut off a little bit—but this is the original photo.” Griffey’s wearing the navy-blue hat of Seattle’s Class A affiliate, the San Bernardino Spirit, whose logo is a silver S over a red star. The picture was taken by the late V.J. Lovero, an Angels team photographer who shot Griffey and his father for a Sports Illustrated feature in 1988. Lovero sold one of his extras to Upper Deck, which airbrushed the hat royal blue, erased the star, made the S yellow and—ta-da!—completed the makeover.

And then there’s this ‘doth protest too much’ rebuttal from the Upper Deck Blog. Though it seems some of the facts in the SI article were incorrect (and not checked for some reason), calling the article a ‘hatchet job’ is a little much. However, if you want to read 10 reasons the author of the Upper Deck Blog knows that card collecting is not dead, or see several comments from folks operating card shops, that’s the link you’d click.

Since the Moneyball script was leaked this summer, some folks took it upon themselves to shoot a scene, just to see how it would come out. Execution isn’t flawless, but it is a cool visualization of what the movie will/would be like. I imagine tighter cuts and dialogue delivered a little snappier, but we can work with this.

Via Baseball Musings.

I should say up front that I’m a huge fan of Timmy so maybe I’m oversensitive, but isn’t this kind of a weird thing to say?

In the same way that a child’s bedroom isn’t the same without a favorite old teddy bear or a beloved, threadbare old blanket, Fenway Park isn’t the same without Tim Wakefield.

Threadbare?

I’m not quite sure what it is about Rickey that fascinates me, but I’m happy to post his speech accepting induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Or, Bullying the Ballot Box.

Red Sox Nation’s power as one of the more active constituencies when it comes to MLB All Star balloting is well known. With that power comes great responsibility. Such as the responsibility to vote AAA player Lastings Milledge into the All Star Game. It makes sense, if the National League team is weaker, the AL is more likely to win and thus take home field advantage in the World Series. Also this:

…At the very least we’d be teaching MLB a valuable lesson on how to take a person’s name off the digital ballot if they’re not even wearing a major league uniform at the time. Why is Milledge even eligible?

Via Baseball Musings.

Today’s Sunday Globe Magazine has a 5,000 word profile of Jerry ‘RemDawg’ Remy. Interesting to read that his bubbly, fun loving on-air persona is so far from how he is when not doing game analysis. In the off-season, he stays out of the public eye completely “preferring to sit alone in his den, in front of his 70-inch flat screen, and smoke his Marlboro Reds”.

There are some other tidibits including Remy quit smoking this year, his side business makes about a million dollars a year, and he hates giving speeches. Remy was soundly criticized for promoting The Remy Report a couple years ago, but toned it down drastically last year.

This profile was definitely not written for a sports fan and features many apparent contradictions, but it will give you a quick sketch of the man.

(Via Twitter)