Opinion

Lefty Cuban pitching sensation Aroldis Chapman defected from his national team in July and he is currently a coveted unsigned Major League Baseball free agent.

ESPN The Magazine reported in the summer that Chapman vacated his hotel room in the Netherlands, where Cuba was in the midst of participating in a baseball  tournament, and never returned.

I love the offseason in baseball. Love it.

I love the trade rumors. I love the rumors about who’s going where and how much they’re going to get when they arrive. I love all the work and research people do during the offseason as well as the prospect lists.

There are two things about the offseason I don’t much care for. One is when the Tigers do dumb things or are rumored to be about to do something dumb. Another thing I don’t love about the offseason is the point we’re at right now. In this early stage, the news is slow and we don’t really know much.

Roy Halladay in pinstripes?

With recent talk that the Mets may not be spending on a top tier free agent, many Mets fans have begun speculating which second tier free agents or trade targets may be a fit.

Glen Perkins has dropped his grievance against the Minnesota Twins.

The two sides were able to reach a settlement earlier today, thus avoiding the hearing that was planned for this Friday in New York.

The grievance came as a result of the Twins’ decision to option Perkins to Triple-A Rochester after activating him from the disabled list at the end of August.

Perkins and his agent felt that he should have remained on the major league roster and been sent on a minor league rehabilitation assignment rather than being sent to the minors.

At the end of the 2005 season, Johnny Damon's agent, Scott Boras, was seeking a seven-year contract valued at $84 million for his client. That amounted to an average annual salary of $12 million.

First, let me get this out of the way—congratulations to the New York Yankees and their fans on winning the World Series.  They were the best team and deserved to win.

Okay, now I can move on to why the rest of baseball needs to see what the Yankees accomplished in the last twelve months, and why they should be afraid—be very afraid.

When Ted Lilly opted for left shoulder surgery on Nov. 3, he may have put his Chicago Cubs in the market for a free agent starter.

One week later, an MLB.com story revealed that John Smoltz, who filed for free agency Nov. 5, hopes to pitch in 2010. For many Cubs fans, the gravity of that revelation should not be overlooked.

There are lots of worldly occurrences that make absolutely no sense to me. For instance, popular American culture is apparently obsessed with vampires at the moment.

Vampires? Really? Who signed off on this?

My faith in a benevolent Higher Power has me convinced there's a bunch of television executives somewhere laughing themselves silly at the gag. The phenomenon has to be a perverse bet between suits a la the Duke Brothers in Trading Places—"I'll bet you a dollar we can get the masses to go crazy about anything if we throw enough production behind it."