Could Overbay trade open door for Encarnacion move?
The Globe and Mail's Jeff Blair tweeted Tuesday that Lyle Overbay was 90 percent likely to be traded at the winter meetings. Assuming that the return for Overbay is not a first-baseman or left-fielder, this trade could open up a switch for Edwin Encarnacion.While Encarnacion is coming off a poor year beseiged by injuries, he remains capable of knocking 20-plus homeruns out of the park. With a career average of .260 with a .341 on-base percentage (.272/.351 if you throw out 2009 and his rookie year) he still has inherent value and may have a couple All-Star caliber years in him... or more accurately, in his

The final Geoff Baker Rigidity Award of the ShysterBall Era
Remember the Geoff Baker Rigidity Awards? If not, they were a short series of posts I wrote last spring in the wake of the Jerod Morris/Raul Ibanez steroid dustup. You know, the one in which a blogger said that it was possible, based on a statistical pattern, that Raul used PEDs and then every mainstream writer came out of the woodwork to attack said blogger for being irresponsible? Following all of that, our friend Geoff Baker wrote a column in which he claimed that the people who hurl this kind of baseless innuendo wouldn't have passed the

My Morning in Exile
As I'm winding up work this morning, a law student who has worked in my office as a clerk since the beginning of summer left me a mix CD entitled "Music that Craig Likes?" She and I have been friendly enough, but we've never talked about music or pop culture or anything like that. Certainly not about anything of enough substance that would give anyone a sufficient lead to go and pick out 15 songs that are likely to be up my alley. Skeptical, I put the CD in. The results: fabulous. Mostly old school punk -- Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Stiff Little Fingers, The Damned, and more mainstream stuff like the Ramones and the Clash -- but also some nice 80s and 90s flavor like Billy Bragg, Nick C

This annotated week in baseball history: Nov. 22-Nov. 28, 1951
On November 25, 1951 Bucky Dent was born. Dent had his brief, memorable moment in the sun, and of course, that is practically the only thing people know about him. Richard looks at other, similar players.Click the title to read more.Read more great baseball stuff at The Hardball Times.

Making sense of Juan Castro to Phillies
On the face of it, Juan Castro signing a major-league contract worth about $700,000 with a 2011 club option makes no sense. After all, this is a 37-year old with a career line of .230/.270/.332. He has negligible value on offense, and I couldn't care less about his .277 mark he posted last year (/.311/.339). The only thing separating .277 from a .230 average is five hits. With Castro's weak power, I would be willing to bet those extra five hits were likely nabbed on either a seeing-eye single fluke, a texas leaguer or incompetence from defenders.David Murphy of the Philadelphia Inquirer