Ken Rosenthal, in an article about high-caliber free agents still in waiting, suggests the idea that Sheets pull a "Clemens" and wait until the summer to sign with a team in the heat of a pennant race. For mostly selfish reasons, I can't say I'm on board with him there.
Over at Crawfish Boxes, a Houston Astros blog, they make the connection that 5 of the biggest flops in Astros franchise history have been Texans, dubbed the "Texas Effect." This is due in no small part to the Astros, in general, being littered with Texans; the Rangers native to the Lone Star State that I can think of are Taylor Teagarden, Chris Davis, and David Murphy. Any more?
Remember the Yankees' spending spree earlier this offseason where they spent $400 million to sign three type A free agents? I was a bit apprehensive that this affluent display had not quite reached its conclusion, and that the Steinbrenner family would set their eyes on other pitching options (notably Ben Sheets). Well, according to Major League Baseball policy, they can't. Fortunately, restrictions imposed by Major League Baseball prohibit any team from luring more than three Type A free agents in the same offseason. I'm not sure that the Yankees would have been aggressively pursuing Sheets anyways, given their recent problems with injury prone veterans like Carl Pavano, but they did just sign AJ Burnett for five years and $82.5 million . . .
On a similar note, NPR writes about the Yankees' utter defiance of the economic recession. The article includes some quotes from former Rangers president Mike Cramer, now a professor at NYU. It was the concluding sentences of the piece that won me over:
"So even if the Yankees seem recession proof, they do stick to the economics law of supply and demand. They supply a great storyline for baseball, by demanding that every non-Yankee fan has at least one deep-pocketed nemesis team to root against."
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